


Day 0 and all the days after.

by Werepirechick



Series: Apocalypse Wow [1]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Family Loss, Gen, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Parent(s), Memory Loss, Post-Apocalypse, Sensory Deprivation, Survival, Terminal Illnesses, april's growing discomfort with her alien heritage, bunch of the same ones for the donnie and raph one but now with, tags to be added with part two of the two-shot, the april and casey two-shot tags are as follow, very graphic injury descriptions in the beginning pls be warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-01-05 12:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werepirechick/pseuds/Werepirechick
Summary: Donnie dies on day 0 after the mutagen bombs fall, but keeps on living anyways.Or, he hopes he is.--/--The world burns green on ground zero, and April barely shields them from the flames. For that, she and Casey live through the mutagen bomb fallout.But how far is too far, trying to carve out their survival in the wastelands?--/--Raph's world has always been one full of death, the dying, and the unending battle to survive.He doesn't remember ever living any other kind of life, and for him, that's normal.





	1. D&R

**Author's Note:**

> okay so Mutant Apocalypse was the single most disappointing series finale i have ever had the displeasure of watching, BUT.
> 
> donnie. being a robot. raph. not remembering anything of their past lives. hooooooo is that some goodass angst fuel right there.
> 
> good fucking riddance ciro and his fumbling attempts to write these kids, hello the land of free for all headcanons. :D

Day 0.

Donnie comes back to consciousness, and experiences a backfire of pure  _agony_  for it.

He nearly passes out again, struggling to breathe through the waves of pain coursing through him. Everything hurts. Everything is pain. Donnie wants to die it’s so bad and he doesn’t even know  _why_  he’s hurting so much.

He doesn’t die, yet. He just keeps gasping wetly, and feeling something move hot and wrong as he does. There’s- there’s something wrong- very, very wrong with his body.

Donnie is terrified senseless. He doesn’t want to look. Not even the split second he’d felt the impact against a windshield- years ago- compares to the sickening pain he’s experiencing now.

His vision is blurry, hearing filled with just the scattered sound of his heartbeat- Donnie is looking up at the sky, which shouldn’t be a poisonous black and green. He can only see some of it, through a craggy opening in a black stone ceiling. He thinks he might be underground, but can’t remember why or focus on anything other than the roiling clouds above him.

The sky shouldn’t be that color. The sky is supposed to be  _blue._  Not- not a noxious, dark storm-

Why isn’t the sky blue?

Then it all comes back to him.

Donnie’s memory restarts, just in time for him to figure out why he’s in so much agony, and how he ended up in this situation to begin with.

Donnie sobs, because he’s pinned under concrete rubble and he’s alone and they  _failed._

The sky is that color because they failed. And now the world is going to die.

Donnie is going to die. He’s dying.

Donnie sobs harder, gasping a scream as he lifts his head and contracts muscles that don’t want to move and send new waves of pain as he tries to force them. His left hand is sluggish to respond, and he feels broken knuckles and fingers in that appendage. The right one works fine, for all the good it does him at the moment. He’s pinned from the waist down, and it’s only partially because a few tons of rubble has crushed his legs.

He’s been impaled. Right through and into the stone beneath him.

Donnie stares, uncomprehendingly and with slowly dawning horror, at the length of metal lanced through his center.

Distantly, he assesses that this is why it feels like his lungs are filling with fluid. It’s because they are. He’s bleeding out and filling up at the same time and Donnie knows he’s got precious little time before he’s gone.

Outside his range of vision- which is limited, trapped in his tunnel- he hears wails and screaming. There’s sirens going off, the sound of buildings starting to fall apart-

It sounds like hell, and Donnie is inside a sinkhole right in the middle of it all.

He doesn’t know where his brothers are. He doesn’t know if they’re alive or dead. He doesn’t know if  _April and Casey_ are alive or dead, somewhere out in the increasing disaster zone above.

Donnie hiccups, trying to get a grip on his spiralling fears. He slows his breathing by sheer force of will alone. Panicking will just screw any chance he has at getting out of this alive. And Donnie isn’t ready to die yet. Not while his family is still out there, probably injured and in need of his help.

Donnie is in need of  _their_  help. But he’s all alone.

No one will get to him in time. He’ll have to solve this himself.

Donnie finally brings himself down to a baseline, shoving the terror and agony out of his immediate focus. He starts taking stock of what he has at his disposal. Which is nothing. He can’t move, only one arm is of any use, he’s bleeding out rapidly-

Donnie feels something stir and spark around his head.

-and he’s got Metalhead.

The thin band of metal circling his skull is intact, and functioning, against all the odds. It’s a miracle the device isn’t smashed to pieces, kind of like it’s a miracle Donnie’s head isn’t. Now that he’s not lost in a whirlwind of fear and pain and terror, Donnie asks the mental interface if Metalhead is still functional.

He gets a flash of _systems online_  in his head, and Donnie laughs hysterically in triumph.

 _Come here,_  he commands, and he receives the  _on route_  right after. He knows Metalhead was left behind when they’d scaled up to the rooftop, where Leo had- had-

Donnie’s thoughts stutter for a moment, remembering his brother’s desperate face as he shoved them off the building and out of the way. Of the mutagen bomb, one of hundreds all over the world, designed to warp the entire face of the planet and every being living on it-

Donnie didn’t see Leo jump after them.

Another cracking sob comes out of him without permission, breaking his forced calm.

Donnie tries and fails to rapidly accept the fact that Leo was likely killed in the blast, directly exposed at close range. He keeps trying anyways. He keeps trying to accept the likelihood, if only to spare his pointless hopes being shattered later on- until rubble starts shifting, and the beeping of his favorite invention comes within hearing range.

Metalhead makes its way down the sinkhole, remarkably unscathed from being hit by a mutagen bomb. The only difference Donnie can immediately tell is that the originally silver paint of his creation is now an off-color green. Metalhead is alive and working at full capacity though, so Donnie could give less than half a shit that his paint job needs redoing. Nonorganic matter for the win.

He tries to speak as Metalhead approaches, and chokes on his own blood.

Donnie coughs, tears leaking out of his eyes as the motion jars his pinned torso. He can’t think for who knows how long- senses filled to the brim with agony as he tries to pull himself back together, even as the metal impaling him rips at his fragile insides. His hips shift as he coughs, and he feels things that  _should not move like that_ grind against each other. The thought  _please, end it already_  comes back to him, but less specific. Just the want for it to  _stop_  is all that really gets through.

His vision is going blacker on the edges. Heartrate stuttering for real, now. He’s so close. He’s so close that he can taste death among the iron and burnt salt on his tongue.

Donnie doesn’t know what to do. He can’t see anything beyond the hole to the sky above him, and he has no one coming to help him. He’s running out of time.

Donnie loses consciousness for a brief few minutes.

He comes back only because of his external senses, linked to him through Metalhead’s receivers and scanners. He hasn’t perfected them yet, still in the testing stages of being able to fully synchronize his brainwaves with a programmed code.

Donnie awakens again only because of those experimental syncs. His mind tries to fall asleep, to pass out and escape the excruciating pain, but Metalhead’s perimeter and health stats scanners jolt Donnie back to consciousness as his heartrate falls below a point.

His breathing is getting harder and harder to accomplish, the red puddle underneath him growing big enough to soak Metalhead’s feet- and Donnie stares at the little robot that survived everything, came to him, and has just saved his life.

And he gets an idea. A hysterical, insane idea.

 _Bend down,_  Donnie instructs, and raises his single working hand to pry open the panel on top of the robot’s skull. He forces his broken hand into working order, ignoring how one finger is bent the opposite direction is should be and the other ones turning a darker green by the second with thick bruises.

He pulls out wires and a mini keypad. He works fast and as accurately as he can, and takes off the program limiters for the experimental synchronization. He rewires a few things, double checks as reliably as he can, triple checks, and nearly blacks out again- only to have his senses reawaken and then expand.

He sees himself, in a sense, through Metalhead’s scanners. He gets the readings of his own dying body-  _chances of survival: 0000.3%-_  and of their surroundings of broken stone and metal. He sees his broken shell, legs, pelvis and hand- and he sees the slowing of his heartbeat.

Donnie has minutes-  _seconds_  left.

Donnie is going to die one way or another; it might as well be in a highly metal way, like Casey would’ve said.

Donnie shuts his eyes, and reaches into the unbarred connection between him and Metalhead.

Donnie loses all sensation. He doesn’t lose his sight. It just shifts perspective.

His watches heartrate drops to nothing, with the last beats pushing more blood out the torn holes in his scales and shell. It further stains his sensationless feet, dark red and shining in the apocalyptic light from the sky.

Donnie watches his own body bleed out, and die.

Donnie stands up, stiff metal unlike organic flesh in its responsiveness.

And he leaves his body without a glance backwards.

 

\--/--

 

Donnie finds Raph.

He doesn’t find anyone else.

The world is filled with smoke and rubble, fires starting every block and inhuman  _things_  howling everywhere else. Donnie sneaks through it all, scanning frantically for any sign of his family.  _Negative, negative, negative- found._

Donnie locks on the location and moves fast as his new legs will carry him.

Raph landed aboveground, hard. He’s unconscious but breathing when Donnie finds his brother; blood trickling out his nose and leaving a darkening trail down Raph’s face. Donnie’s scanners say his brother has a 70% chance of survival if he receives the correct medical care for the concussion and hairline fractures to his skull. No other broken bones or profusely bleeding gashes; only minor bleeding from the gash along his crown. Raph is okay. He’s alive.

Donnie isn’t used to being smaller than his big brother. It feels wrong.

Donnie briefly wonders if someone can be in shock when they have no physical body anymore. He discards the thought right after.

Something tries to crawl over to them in their dark little alley, snarling with a garbled voice and moving with too many limbs in all the wrong places.

Donnie shoots it in the skull without a thought.

It flops over, steaming from the laser bolt to the head.

Donnie ignores it once its vitals drop to 0.

He picks up Raph by his armpits, and gets them the hell out of hell.

 

\--/--

 

Day 1.

It’s as metaphorically hair-raising as the one before. Donnie has never had hair, and he certainly doesn’t now.

Raph is stable. He’s breathing easy and he regained consciousness a couple times over the course of the night and following day. The outward bleeding has stopped now that stitches are in place, and Donnie’s scanners report no signs of an internal continuation of it.

Donnie suspects Raph could suffer from brain damage. He’ll live, but with what effects from the injury? Donnie doesn’t know. He can’t do a full examination until Raph is lucid longer than a few moments.

Donnie preoccupies himself with protecting the barricade of their temporary hideout. Someone’s veterinary clinic, empty of animals and left with only wrecked cages. There’s blood on the floor, and Donnie knows it’s human, not animal.

He doesn’t know what happened to the animals or humans who’d been here. All he knows is that it’s a place that’s fortifiable, safe for the moment, and letting him heal his brother. It’s still terrifying whenever a screech or scream is too close outside the doors.

Raph doesn’t talk when he wakes in fits, just incomprehensible gibberish. Which is fine for the moment. Donnie isn’t speaking either.

He’s somewhat afraid to know what he’ll sound like in his new body. Like himself, or like a machine’s static feedback? He didn’t calibrate Metalhead to do anything more than act as a speaker when Donnie spoke through a microphone. How will the speakers work now that he’s speaking directly from inside them?

He’s too much of a coward to test them.

Donnie manages to upgrade his scanner though, giving it a range of 15 blocks instead of 8. He gets scans of shambling or darting creatures all day and night. None of them match the scan profiles of his family.

Donnie sits in silence all of day 1, waiting for Raph to wake fully.

 

\--/--

 

Day 2.

Raph tries to stab Donnie.

 _“-who the hell are you?!”_  his brother bellows, holding a scalpel at what passes for Donnie’s eyes. Raph’s eyes are wide and terrified, and the way his hands are shaking is completely out of character. “Wha-  _what_  the hell are you?!”

Donnie speaks for the first time in two days.

 _“I-I-I’m Donnie, it’s me, Donnie!”_ Donnie hears his voice and doesn’t quite recognize it. It’s similar, but it’s also  _not._   _“Raph- calm down, it’s just me. I put myself inside Metalhead. It’s- it’s okay-”_

Raph let’s go abruptly, stumbling backwards from Donnie. Donnie, unused still to his new body, stumbles as well and falls over with a clatter. As he picks himself back up, Raph stares at Donnie; breathing shallow and fast.

Donnie supposes it’s a bit of a shock, waking up and finding out your brother has transferred his consciousness into a homemade battle robot.

 _“Please be more careful with me, Raph,”_ Donnie says, trying to break the tense silence.  _“We can’t afford me going into sleep mode right now.”_  Raph keeps staring at him with scared eyes.  _“…Raph?”_

“…what’s a Metalhead?” Raph asks eventually, staring at Donnie still. “And- who’s  _Donnie?”_

Donnie doesn’t have a heart anymore, but something feels like it skips a beat and skids off its track.

Donnie slowly clenches his fists. He can’t feel the action; just register it in his sensors.

 _“…me,”_ Donnie says quietly, a prayer.  _“Donnie is me. I’m your brother. Like- like Leo, and Mikey. We’re your brothers. Remember?”_

Raph’s brow furrows.

“I have  _brothers?”_

Donnie can’t cry anymore, but in that moment, he wishes he could.

 

\--/--

 

Day 5.

Raph forgets his own name for a few hours.

Donnie’s metal body and circuits somehow manage to have a panic attack. It’s something of a relief, to know he can still actually and really  _panic_  and not just feel the deadened sensations of programmed data receivers.

Raph yells at him a lot. Confused. Donnie barely keeps his brother from getting them killed by attracting former humans to their location. It’s then a struggle to keep Raph from running off altogether, just like it has been for days.

Donnie tries to think on the brighter side of things. At least they only have to find food and water for one person. All Donnie needs anymore is recharge time, to let the Dimension-X crystal powering him rest for a while or syphon off an electricity generator. He is desperately glad he’d perfected that energy source before all this, as well as added self-healing capabilities to Metalhead.

No, not self-healing. Self-repairing. Donnie doesn’t feel  _better_  when something slots back into working order inside his body- he just goes back to functioning at a 100%. It’s disconcerting, in truth, being unable to feel sensations properly.

He can’t feel it when Raph next wakes, freaks at the sight of Donnie, and punches him across the face. The startled  _“OW!”_  is only reflex.

In actuality, Donnie doesn’t feel anything at all.

He can’t.

 

\--/--

 

Day 8.

Donnie still can’t find any sign of their family in the increasingly dangerous city. Raph continues to have amnesia and not know who Donnie, and sometimes who he  _himself_ , is. The settling feeling that this is it, there’s no reset this time, it’s  _over_ , finally sinks in completely.

Donnie calculates the chances of his brothers having survived whatever injuries they received, then the prior eight days, and comes up with a dishearteningly low number.

 _“…I wish master Splinter was here,”_  Donnie says in a crackling whisper, staring down at the ruined city from their current hiding spot. A rooftop which they had relative trouble getting up to. Half because Raph remembers and forgets his skills on and off, and half because Donnie is a tiny metal robot with short legs.

“Who?” Raph asks, in one of his better moods.

Donnie can’t think properly for a solid five seconds. Then, in a quiet voice, says,  _“Our father, Raph. Master Splinter was our father. He died two years ago.”_

Raph scratches at the edge of his head bandages, squinting.

“…I don’t remember it. Him. Whatever.”

Donnie’s fists tremble on the stone ledge, his head lowering as he hunches.

He desperately, desperately wishes his father were here. Leo, Mikey, April and Casey- any of them. He wants them here to help him fix Raph and fix the world and bring sensation back to Donnie’s body.

Donnie wants a hug.

Raph hasn’t let him within five feet for days.

Donnie can’t cry.

He can’t.

He wishes he could.

 

\--/--

 

Day 15.

Donnie gets fed up with being short and makes adjustments. He’s never going back from this; this is  _him_  now, so it might as well fit his mental image of who he is.

He makes himself taller, for starters. Much taller. He decreases as much of Metalhead’s bulk he can without compromising function. He gives himself a flexible shell, better motor skills, wider scan range. Redoes his whole design in the end.

He paints over the faded, sickly green of the impact blast with a rich dark one. Feels a flash of inspiration and replaces his lights so they’re purple.

Donnie looks at his reflection in the staff bathroom of the store they’re holed up in, and for the first time in days isn’t  _totally_  uncomfortable with the face that stares back.

He went with a sleeker design. Faster, nimbler. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now. He’ll tweak it more when he’s got time.

The blank face of his new self is somehow less disquieting to look at than Metalhead’s blocky fake turtle face was. The feeling of dysphoria had been so much worse with that looking back at him.

“…new look?” Raph asks when Donnie finally comes upstairs to the offices. He doesn’t startle today, or inch for his weapons, so Donnie takes the wary look in stride.

 _“I needed to be more like myself,”_  Donnie says, and he  _still_  can’t figure out how to perfectly replicate his voice, but its close enough now he can somewhat hear  _himself_ when he speaks. He spreads his arms, showcasing the new look with a bit of forced enthusiasm.  _“Think the others will dig it?”_

“I don’t know, probably?” Raph says, unsure. “Which ones?”

Donnie sighs, the action useless without lungs.  _“Leo? Mikey? Casey? April? Any of them??”_

“…are they into robot stuff?”

Donnie sighs again. It remains as pointless as before.

 

\--/--

 

Day 19.

Grief takes Donnie, suddenly and violently, and he can’t stop replaying the final moments he saw all of his family.

His memory databanks are able to supply the images with perfect clarity. He sees Leo, shoving them all away with a stricken desperation to save their lives. He sees Mikey, looking up at the end of their world with a truly terrified expression. He sees Raph, as they raced to confront Kraang subprime, looking grim and determined to stop the attack. He sees Casey, cocksure and confident as he runs into the fray, acting as distraction so they can go on ahead. He sees April, alight and ferocious as she runs after Casey, crushing a wave of droids with her mind and going back to back with their human friend as the ranks closed on them. Donnie sees himself having to leave them, being unable to feel confident, finding no words to reassure his brother, missing Leo’s arm as Donnie grabbed for him-

Donnie sees them all, and he can’t seem to catch his nonexistent breath.

Raph is no comfort, still staring at Donnie like he’s a stranger as he stands motionless in the center of their latest hideout.

“What’s your problem?” is all he asks.

Donnie shakes his head slowly, and retreats into sleep mode before any further questions can be asked of him. It’s a brief escape from the torrent of horrific scenes in his head, but it’s a dreamless and dark one.

It’s both a relief and torture.

 

\--/--

 

Day 27.

They finally leave the city.

It’s too dangerous. As good a place to find food and water it is, it’s crawling with mutagen warped humans. All of them feral and aggressive. Scattered among those mutants are sentient ones- animals given bigger, better, faster bodies and smarter minds. Donnie didn’t scan a single mutant that was even close to the signatures he was still, against all hope, looking for.

In the Shellraiser, retrieved from the abandoned lair through risky combat with a nest of mutants, Donnie and Raph drive out of what remains of New York.

As they do, following a road towards the farmhouse Raph still doesn’t recall, Donnie scans to the very edges of his range. And as he does, he feels dread settle inside him.

The world is dying.

All around them as they drive, Donnie’s sensors inform him the ground is filled with toxic chemicals and extradimensional waste. It’s soaking into the ground and killing every bioorganic being for miles.

Donnie can and can’t fathom the fact that the world is going to end like this. The slow death of vegetation and complete genocide of its top predators. His digital mind can comprehend it, but what he’s sure is the consciousness of himself just  _can’t._

It’s just… too horrible to accept.

He calculates how likely it is the ecosystem could recover from it naturally.

He gets a negative number.

Donnie stops calculating and scanning for a while. He turns back to going over again the downloaded files about brain damage and brain chemistry and memory problems in his databanks. He’s already memorized them all- he literally couldn’t have  _not_  memorized them- but he does so anyways to pass the time.

He reprocesses 650 articles in under an hour. He rereads them again. And again. And again.

Raph keeps driving. He still won’t let Donnie touch him. He still doesn’t remember who Donnie is.

He doesn’t remember anything of who they were. Are.

Donnie reads his articles and documents another few times, highlighting sections that could be useful in the future, when Raph trusts him enough to try treatments. It’s only so much of a comfort.

 

\--/--

 

Day 45.

Raph still doesn’t completely remember who Donnie is, but he’s stopped waking up and forgetting their current situation. The memory gaps seem to only start prior to the cranial injury. Donnie isn’t sure to count that as a win or not.

The farmhouse was desolate when they got there. They’d lingered for a few days, Donnie upgrading himself with better weapons and tech from the Kraang ship in the basement, and Raph trying and failing to remember how to draw.

In the end, Raph had thrown out the sketchpad and pencils in a fit of anger. Donnie had stared at the crumpled papers and pencils in the garbage can, and had only tried once to get Raph to take back the items. His brother yelled at him and told Donnie to piss off if he knew what was good for him.

Raph didn’t even know they were his to begin with. They’d been a gift, from April to him, and she’d drawn on the first page a sketch portrait of Raph in it. A second gift, and Raph had given one back soon after; a sketch portrait of April, sparring with her own shadow.

Donnie had only been able to find her tessen blade among the wreckage. He hadn’t been able to find anything of Casey’s. Or Mikey’s, or Leo’s…

He’d found Raph’s sais.

Raph doesn’t know how to use them consciously anymore.

They leave the farmhouse behind and get on the road again, once Raph had used up his patience. Donnie leaves a message on the walls of the house- information about him and Raph, that they’re  _alive-_  and paints it broad as he can with the acrylics Raph threw out after his sketchbook. Donnie’s hands don’t shake, but that may just be because he’s fixed them to not.

There’s no destination for them as they drive away. There’s not really a goal to anything anymore, besides Donnie trying to help Raph remember.

It’s not going well.

Donnie is trying to not lose hope.

 

\--/--

 

Day 55.

Raph has a particularly bad day and denies the idea that he ever had a father, brothers, or a family at all. He calls Donnie a creative assortment of names, mostly revolving around being a sentient kitchen appliance or a walking trashcan.

Donnie reminds himself it’s not something his brother means. He tries to, multiple times.

Weeks on end of hearing the same thing, on and off depending on the day’s moods, wears on a guy, though.

It brings back to him a question he’d asked himself, way at the beginning of his metallic existence, sitting on the floor of a veterinary clinic and asking himself about the implications of what he’d done.

Are his memories really his, or just downloaded imprints from the real Donatello?

 _Is_  Donnie himself, or is he copy of himself?

Is he really sentient, or just a very, very clever imitation of it?

And if he weren’t really himself, instead a snapshot impression of a real person- would he be able to tell? Would  _Raph_  be able to tell, should he remember? Would Donnie’s brother spot the critical mistakes and gaps in the façade and call him out as a loose cannon computer program?

Raph says he doesn’t have brothers, that Donnie isn’t of relation to him at all. Donnie stares at his metal hands and wonders if that might just be a possibility.

Where does one draw the line of beings with souls and life, and ones who lack those things, anyways?

Donnie can’t see the line anymore. And it terrifies him.

 

\--/--

 

Day 63.

Raph won’t speak to Donnie for an entire day. He’s completely refusing treatment anymore for his memory gaps, and Donnie is reaching the end of his rope.

It’s been months, and Raph hasn’t shown even a hint of remembering their pasts. The one confirmation of anything Donnie has anymore is the broken fan from April and the trundling war truck he built himself. With the addition of his own body, of course, as altered from its original design it is.

But, are those even really confirmations? Donnie is the only one who remembers their true origins- to Raph, they just appeared in his life all those weeks ago. Including Donnie.

The only proof Donnie has to himself, out in the vast and growing wasteland, is his own memories. Which are coded, and were downloaded, and may not even be really his.

Donnie figures that even if he’s not a real person, at least he’s confirmed a robot can have an identity crisis all on its own.

 

\--/--

 

Day 67.

Raph threatens to go off on his own, meaning it this time. Donnie barely manages to diffuse the situation before it actually happens.

Donnie spends a lot of time in sleep mode after that, or hiding in the systems of the Shellraiser. He’s tiptoeing around Raph for fear of sparking another fight, and as sick of that as he is Donnie can’t let the fights climax.

If he loses Raph, what would he have left? What would  _either_  of them have left?

There’s nothing but war and carnage between mutants right now- freshly made beings fighting to dominate and defend what they claim as theirs- and it somehow makes the relationship Donnie now has with his brother seem sane. Better he keep fielding Raph’s moods and memory slips than disappearing into a world without order, or care for a robot having an identity crisis.

Donnie uses sleep mode often, to escape the pacing thoughts in his head. He doesn’t like going over every minute detail he can recall about his old life and old self, constantly warring whether or not the evidence is negative or positive.

Donnie sleeps to the best of his ability.

He misses dreaming.

 

\--/--

 

Day 70.

Donnie loses his arm.

It’s ripped right off him, by an enormous mutant that’s been unable to handle the stress of going from a regular bull to a sentient one. Donnie’s sensors scream at him, warnings and malfunction errors popping up all over his mind.

He doesn’t feel pain, still.

He’s lost an arm and he can’t even feel agony for it.

Donnie shoots the bull mutant in his leg, and tries to get back on his feet. The bull slams his fists down on Donnie’s back before he can, knocking things out of place underneath Donnie’s metal shell and making the warnings screech.

He vaguely wants to actually feel the pain of the blow. At least then he’d be feeling  _something._

Donnie is flipped over, and distantly registers the action of being gored by a bull’s horns.

Parts of his circuitry go dark, left limbs going dead and the right ones pinned by hoof-like hands- and Donnie wonders if this is when he’ll finally die.

He gets an awfully helpful  _error error error_  message from his energy levels. The crystal socket inside his chest is dangerously close to being punctured.

Donnie tries to twist his arm free, to shoot the foaming fucker goring him right in the head, but can’t get the whining hydraulics to respond.

Donnie is going to die.

He wonders if Raph will care at all when Donnie is gone.

His crystal’s socket blares silent alarms as it starts to give, and Donnie prepares to explode as it’s compromised.

Raph tackles the bull from behind, and stabs him through the eye with a sai.

Donnie’s chest is ripped open a little more as Raph bowls over the other mutant, and Donnie’s ability to see finally cuts out.

He’s trapped inside a black bubble, as senseless as he always feels, for a few moments. The only data he receives is blocky error messages and cheery information that his power source is nearly compromised.

Donnie doesn’t want to die like this. Alone, trapped in his own body.

A message pops up that something is touching him. Donnie tries to reroute emergency energy to his visuals, attempting to jumpstart the repair process without fully shutting down.

It works. He gets back visuals, and hearing, too, which he hadn’t even realized he’d lost.

 _“-onnie!”_  Raph is saying, shaking Donnie’s shoulders.  _“Donnie, answer me! Come on come on- god, please wake up- DONNIE!”_

Donnie’s voice modulation is shot. He tries to speak and all that comes out is static filled tones. His right limbs twitch, his arm trying to raise itself and struggling.

“ _R-r---r-r--a--”_  Donnie’s voice box produces, crackling and garbled. He tries again and gets an  _error: malfunction_  message as the voice box shuts down. Donnie is trapped a little more inside his own personal hell.

But.

Raph is holding him. Tightly.

His brother is actually hugging him for the first time in months.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-” Raph says, over and over. “I should’ve been paying attention, I shouldn’t’ve turned off my phone just ‘cause I was pissed with you, I shouldn’t’ve been pissed in the first place- oh god Donnie I’m so sorry, don’t- don’t die on me,  _please-_ ”

 _Error_  says his voice box. Donnie tells it  _fuck you_  and keeps trying to make it work. He tells his useless appendage to actually do its job while he’s at it, spamming the emergency self-repair protocols and rerouting them. His power source can survive another few minutes without assistance.

“Come  _on,_  little brother,” Raph says, voice cracking as he searches desperately for a sign Donnie isn’t dying. And maybe that’s what finally does it.

Donnie gets his stupid malfunctioning arm to finally land on Raph’s shoulder, metal hand clenching into the big coat Raph’s started wearing. His voice box comes back online, and even though it sounds nothing like himself, Donnie says, 

_“You- c-called me- yo--ur brother.”_

Raph stares at him, eyes filling. And he nods.

“Yeah, yeah I did, I- I remembered, okay? I remembered,” Raph’s voice shakes. “You were-  _you were in danger_ , and I just- I  _remembered._  Donnie I’m sorry I- forgot you. I can’t remember anything much, but I- I remember  _you.”_

Donnie hasn’t felt warmth in months.

He feels it now, somehow, deep in his chest. It could be just his power crystal overheating, but he chooses to think of it as real feelings instead.

He misses feeling. He misses dreaming. He misses his family and he misses being sure of his own existence.

He missed his brother.

 _“Th-anks,”_  Donnie laughs, the sound flat and wrong. He hopes Raph knows he means well with it.  _“-bou-t t-t-tim-e, assho-le.”_

Raph laughs, sounding not right either with the exclamation. Neither of them have really sounded all that right in a long while. It’s not that big a deal.

 _“—sle-e-p m-ode,”_ Donnie then manages, because he’s losing the battle to keep his body working without it totally crashing on him. He doesn’t want to shut down without warning, lest Raph really think he’s gone and died.

Donnie loses the fight a split second after he says that, but before all his senses shut down, he hears Raph say he’s got Donnie, he’s got him and he’s sorry and he’ll fix this. He’s not running off again. He won’t forget again. He swears, he promises.

Donnie hopes Raph keeps that promise. He was starting to sincerely doubt if his existence was valued or not.

 

\--/--

 

Day 72.

Donnie is on his feet again, at 100% functional capacity.

It’s nice to not have a giant hole in his chest anymore; he’s getting a little tired of being impaled.

Raph is sitting by a fire when Donnie comes out of the Shellraiser, and it’s really, really great to see real recognition in his brother’s eyes. Not just  _oh it’s the robot again,_  but  _it’s my brother, Donnie._

And Raph actually smiles as Donnie drops onto the ground, something close to how he’d been before the world ended. Its close enough that Donnie feels a wave of nostalgia and grief, and wishes he could smile in return.

He misses emoting properly. There’s nothing about his body that does anymore.

He doesn’t think on that, and sits down next to Raph by the fire. It’s quiet for a while, Donnie updating his data with the few injuries that Raph received and is now healing from, and Raph staring at the fire.

 _“…how much do you remember?”_  Donnie finally asks after a while.  _“About me.”_

Raph shrugs. “When you were getting torn up by that guy, I. I saw something similar, in my memories.” He glances towards Donnie, a hint of distress in his eyes. “What the hell kind of life did we live if it involved someone  _disintegrating you?”_

Donnie laughs without really meaning to. Raph gives him a deeply offended look for it, and Donnie keeps laughing hard enough he imagines his sides would have ached.

Raph leans away from Donnie, understandably unnerved. “Is that somehow funny to you?”

 _“No- no it was awful,”_  Donnie says. He shakes his head, thinking back to that  _other_  moment he’d experienced death. Why has he died so many times in one life? He shouldn’t be able to more than once, but he’s been close or over the line multiple times.  _“It’s just… of all things for you to remember, you remember that specifically? Me getting molecularly scattered by our friend?”_

“Our  _friend_  did that?!”

Donnie laughs again. That night seems so far away now, and the rift it’d temporarily put between him and April so small.

“ _She wasn’t in control of herself,”_  Donnie explains.  _“April got possessed by a crystal we picked up in outer space and it made her go crazy for a bit, that’s all.”_

Raph looks absolutely disbelieving at that explanation. “ _Space?”_  He says incredulously. “How the fuck were we in  _space?”_

_“We got picked up by professor Honeycutt, and used time travel to go back and stop the world from being sucked into a black hole.”_

“…okay full offense- what the  _fuck_  kind of explanation is that?”

Donnie shrugs _. “Literally the story of our lives.”_

Raph closes his eyes, breathes in slow, and rubs his temples. “I’m almost afraid to ask for context.”

Donnie chuckles. It’s a little empty feeling, since his chest doesn’t shake as he does anymore. They lapse into quiet for another while, just sitting next to one another under the dark night sky.

Donnie stares down at his hands, which whirr ever so softly as he clenches and unclenches them.

 _“What else do you remember about me?”_  He asks Raph after a while.

“…I remember you like machine stuff,” Raph says, and that’s an uplifting win all on its own. “and that you were taller than me. You- you always licked off the icing of the fucking poptarts and put them back in the box. Donnie, seriously?”

 _“What can I say? Poptarts icing is delicious,”_  Donnie doesn’t think about how he’ll never taste it again, even if they found some.

Raph snorts, then in a quieter voice, “And… I remember your full name. It’s Donatello.”

That makes Donnie cock his head, surprised. Raph hadn’t shown any signs of knowing more than their nicknames. It’s comforting to know Raph remembers the name now.  _“Did you remember anything else? Maybe about yourself?”_

“…no. Sorry,” Raph slouches, frustrated with himself, and Donnie wishes he could sigh properly.

“ _Oh well,”_ Donnie says.  _“At least you know who I am, now. Getting stabbed every now and again was getting really annoying.”_

Raph winces. “Sorry for that, too. A nosy talking robot was kinda too much for me to handle for a while there.”

_“No shit.”_

Raph punches Donnie’s shoulder. He doesn’t bother saying  _ow_  at the impact. His sensors inform he’s been hit by something, and that’s about it.

“ _I miss being able to feel things,”_  Donnie says abruptly, because that’s been on his mind for months now. Raph hadn’t been willing to do more than trade small talk most days, let alone in depth conversations about Donnie’s growing struggle with being a senseless  _robot._

Raph stares at him for a moment, and says, “…shit, I didn’t even think about that. You really can’t feel- anything?”

Donnie opens and closes his hands. He feels none of the action. “ _Not a single bit. I’m_ metal _, Raph. Metal doesn’t feel things.”_

“But- you can tell when I’m touchin’ you, right?”

 _“My sensors can._ I  _can’t.”_

“…Jesus Christ, Donnie. I’m so sorry.”

Donnie laughs, bitter and tired despite having a full charge. “ _I got to survive having my entire lower half crushed and my chest impaled, but at what cost? I can’t fucking_ feel _anymore, Raph. I think I’m actually forgetting what sensation feels like. What’s the point of living through all that if I can’t even be categorized as_ alive _anymore?”_

Raph is staring at Donnie with mild horror. Donnie feels horror about the whole thing himself. But is he really? Or is he just recalling what that feeling was like?

“ _Can something without a heartbeat or a brain be called a living creature?”_  Donnie asks.  _“Can something that can’t produce the necessary chemical reactions to induce emotions be called a thinking, feeling being? Raph, am I really me or did Donatello die in a fucking sinkhole and I’m just the computerized version of his memories?”_

The questions Donnie hasn’t been able to answer hang in the air, and the longer Raph’s silence drags out the more Donnie imagines it to hurt.

He can’t  _feel_  anything, nothing at all. Are his emotions real? Are his reactions real? Is anything about the self he has now  _real?_

Or is he really just an automated, walking-talking memory bank for someone else?

 _“Holy shit,”_  Raph breathes. “Are you having an identity crisis?”

Donnie barks laughter, throwing his hands up.  “ _Yes, but I think it’s safe to say at this point I’m having a full-fledged existential crisis!”_  He clutches at the sides of his metal skull, feels nothing, and wishes he could scream properly. “ _Am I just playing out a programmed role, am I just using downloaded memories as a baseline for my actions, is anything about me fucking_ real _anymore? Was it EVER? I can’t_ tell _, Raph! I can’t fucking tell!!”_

He draws himself into a ball, miserable and scared and unsure if those emotions are even his own. He wishes he could feel the ground, or the wind, or maybe the way he’s clawing at his own body. It just makes metal on metal scraping sounds, and he feels none of it.

 _“…maybe I’m not him,”_  Donnie whispers.  _“Any living person would have gone insane after this long in sensory deprivation. Maybe I haven’t because I never was one to begin with.”_

A pause, then,

“Or maybe you’re the stubborn asshole I remember you being and can do what no one else can.”

Donnie doesn’t raise his head, but he does turn it towards Raph. His brother-  _but is Raph really that?-_  is looking at him with concern and actual care, and Donnie tries to focus on that instead of questioning his own existence.

“ _…yeah?”_  He asks quietly.

Raph jerks a nod. “Fuck yeah. I don’t remember a whole lot, but I know you had endurance to do pretty much anything. Still have endurance to do anything. If anyone could survive like this, it’d be you.”

 _“But am I really him? Really me?”_  Donnie asks again.  _“How do you know I’m not just using set parameters to fake emotions?”_

“Are you feeling like shit right now?”

“ _I guess, yeah-”_

“You feel like shit when you got torn up?”

“ _-yes, but-”_

“You still care about me? About our brothers and friends?”

 _“Yes.”_  That answer comes without hesitance. Donnie, whether he’s real or not, would give his life a third time for them.

Raph nods to himself, and says firmly, “Then I’d say that’s enough on its own.”

Donnie stares at his brother, and really misses being able to emote utter disbelief.

 _“That- that doesn’t prove anything!”_  Donnie exclaims.

“Proof enough for  _me_  you’re real,” Raph says even more firmly.

 _“Well it’s not enough for me, and I’m the one actually having the crisis here!”_  Donnie wants to be hyperventilating. He feels this would the moment he would do that. His body remains as lifeless as it’s been since he entered it- or awakened in it, maybe.  _“Raph- if I’m not really alive, not really Donatello, then I’m not your actual brother either! All of my memories are just code and_ I’m _just code!”_

Raph doesn’t budge with his expression of absolute certainty, and Donnie’s shoulders slowly slump.

 _“…how can you be so sure I’m_ me _?”_  Donnie asks in a small voice.

“Because I remember shit all about myself, but I remembered  _you,”_  Raph replies. “and this is exactly the sort of nonsense you’d tie yourself up in knots about. You think too hard about this stuff, Donnie. Say you  _aren’t_  the original Donnie- who gives a shit? I’m definitely not whoever the hell I was before all of this, and I don’t care. You were there the first moment I woke up and you’ve stuck around ever since, even after I stabbed you like, six times.”

“ _Eight,”_  Donnie corrects automatically. Raph gives him and a flat look.

“Point being,” Raph continues. “if you aren’t him, I’m not the old Raph either, and the rest of the world could give less than a shit about who either of us are now. The important thing is that  _you_  give a shit about me, and _I_  give a shit about you. That’s more than anyone else does, and I think that’s good enough.”

Donnie tries to accept that ideology, but…

 _“…but I_ want _to be him. I want to be_ me. _”_

“Then that’s who you are,” Raph says, and Donnie wishes he could just believe that.

Donnie shakes his head, and something like a feedback whine is coming out of his voice box. No error messages pop up to explain why that’s happening, and Donnie adds a mental note to give himself another checkup later. See what the problem is  _now._

He’s distracted by Raph roughly tugging him into a hug.

 _“What’s this for?”_  Donnie asks, trying for light and just sounding unhappy.

“You’re crying,” Raph says, like that’s even possible for Donnie anymore.

_“I- Raph I physically can’t cry. Robots don’t cry.”_

“Sounds like crying to me,” Raph says quietly, hugging Donnie even tighter. “so I guess you’re not a robot.”

Donnie laughs at the absurdity of that sentence. He has no pulse, no brain waves, he runs on a battery- what else could he be?

His hands shouldn’t be shaking as he clings to his brother. He fixed that weeks ago.

 _“I missed you,”_  Donnie says quietly, even though there’s a million other things he should be saying right now.

“I missed you, too,” Raph replies, just as quiet.

Donnie puts his head on Raph’s shoulder, cutting out any visuals besides the rough fabric of Raph’s thick coat, and wonders why he feels breathlessly relieved without lungs.

 

\--/--

 

Day 73.

Donnie comes to the conclusion that Raph is right. Raph isn’t Raphael from before, and Donnie hasn’t held it against him for even a second. Raph is just  _Raph,_  whether he remembers growing up in the sewers or being a ninja, and Donnie hasn’t stopped loving him through everything that’s happened.

So maybe he can accept that Raph doesn’t hold it against Donnie for not properly being Donatello. Maybe Donnie can figure out how to not hold it against himself.

…it might take a while for that to work, but Donnie is willing to try.

 

\--/--

 

Day 74.

“You still feel like a fake person today?”

_“…a little, I guess-”_

“Cool, then I guess a fake person won’t mind if I play his least favorite album on repeat and full blast for the next five hours.”

_“Oh god no please don’t play Nickelback all the way to Ohio. I’m a real person, Raph, I’m a real person-!”_

Donnie whines and complains loud as he can as his absolute least favorite Nickelback album starts up in the stereo, but he doesn’t actually mind the teasing or torture.

Robots don’t have extremely strong preferences against Dad Rock CD’S, and they don’t have asshole big brothers to bully them out of bad thought tracks.

Donnie feels a little more alive, bitching all the way across the border to Ohio, and having Raph bitch right back about Donnie’s shitty indie rock tastes.

“You could literally just turn off your hearing, Don.”

“ _Oh and deprive myself of your dulcet fucking tones?”_

“It’d be a lot quieter if you’d deprive me of  _yours.”_

Donnie hooks himself into the speaker system, and turns the volume way up.  ** _“HOW’S THIS, ASSHOLE?”_**

Raph swerves, shaking the whole Shellraiser.  _“Jesus CHRIST, DONNIE-!”_

Donnie cackles, and refuses to disengage from the speakers even as his brother chucks drink cups and garbage wrappers at him. The fight is only settled when they agree to put aside personal tastes for a bit, and just listen to a bit of Queen for the next hundred miles.

 

\--/--

 

Day 76.

“Did you give yourself  _ears?”_ Raph laughs, taking in Donnie’s new additions.

“ _No, I gave myself a boost in scanning and receiving power,”_ Donnie says matter of factly. His new antennae flip upwards, matching the humorous mood he’s in. It feels so good to be able to give himself expression again, even just this much.

Raph watches Donnie’s antennae flip around a bit, and smirks. “Yeah, and they look like little bunny ears.”

 _“Maybe so,”_  Donnie says.

“But?” Raph prompts.

 _“But nothing, just maybe they do look like bunny ears,”_  Donnie says, and Raph laughs again.

In truth, they’d been something of a tribute to his old mask. Now though, Donnie accepts that bunny ears might be alright as well. Raph hasn’t worn his mask in weeks, switching instead between caps as they collect them.

Donnie keeps his tribute to himself. It’s something just for him,  _this_  him, and he’s a little proud of that.

 

\--/--

 

Days 78 – 94.

Raph gets bits and pieces of Donnie’s past self- little things they’d talked about, phrases, just everyday stuff that come and go in clarity-  and he still forgets them on and off afterwards.

But, he doesn’t forget who Donnie is, or that they’re bothers, so Donnie doesn’t mind too much.

He remembers Mikey suddenly, on day 88, while Raph is eating what might one of the last cans of peaches in the world.

Maybe it’s the orange color that does it, or the sweetness like the confectionaries Mikey would bake on a rare occasion- and it triggers a flash of memory in Raph’s mind.

Donnie has to catch the peaches from Raph’s limp hand, and then his brother as he buckles.

 _“Mikey,”_  He says hoarsely, and his hands twist in the dirt. “Oh my god- he- I remember him. Donnie,  _I remember him._ ”

Donnie sets down the peaches, scanning Raph on reflex, even though he knows the pain is an emotional one. He registers a kick in heartrate, a flux in Raph’s brainwaves-

And Raph tears up, curling on himself. A hoarse, cracking sob follows.

That’s enough of a sign that whatever he’s remembered, it’s hurting him badly.

“I can’t believe he’s _gone,”_  Raph says, voice broken, and Donnie can’t even deny that.

 _“I know,”_  Donnie says softly, curling around his brother as he shakes.  _“I can’t either.”_

Raph remembers Mikey after that point, but he forgets their brother’s name a couple times, too. It’s a frustrating cycle for both of them- Raph struggling to deal with a connection that fades and brightens without warning, and Donnie struggling to not despair when the connection is at its faintest.

They make do, around the tremulous feelings and memories. In a world that’s still in the process of being reborn, there’s not much else they can do.

 

\--/--

 

Day 105.

“Who’re April and Casey?” Raph asks over breakfast. Him with some instant oats in a cup and Donnie plugged into a generator they found in the store basement. “You talk about ‘em sometimes.”

Donnie thinks about that for a moment.

 _“…they were our best friends,”_  He says, watching dust drift through the sunbeams that shine in from outside.  _“They were our family.”_

Raph stirs his cup a bit, taking a bite.

“Do you think there’s any way they survived?”

Donnie already ran those numbers months ago. April had had a high chance, given her inhuman DNA and powers. Casey though... well, what comes to Donnie’s mind is all the times his friend had bragged about being undefeatable, indestructible- and all the times he’d been injured anyways.

 _“I wouldn’t put it past them,”_  Donnie settles on, because April had and still might be the something of a human inferno when she felt like it, and Casey is  _Casey._  If any humans and partial humans could have survived the mutagen bombs, it would be those two.

Raph grunts. He eats a little more of his oatmeal. “I like the sound of that Jones kid. I think he’s my sort of guy. April doesn’t sound too shabby, either.”

Donnie snorts.  _“Considering the number of macho man contests you and Casey got into, and how many times April wiped the floor with us all in training- yeah, I’d say they’re your people.”_

Raph grins, and then asks, “Do you miss them?”

Donnie doesn’t even have to think about that one.

_“Every day.”_

 

 

\--/--

 

Day 108.

Donnie finds a collection of paints that survived; deep in the recesses of someone’s abandoned home.

He looks at the brilliant colors, and decides something.

He paints the exact measurements and design of April’s star patch on his chest. The tessen got broken ages ago. This is something he can repaint over and over, so long as he has paints to do it.

There’s a black bandana in the person’s studio, too.

Donnie takes it with him, clutched in his fist.

Raph doesn’t really recognize the symbols for what they are, but a flicker of something  _close_  to that is in his eyes when Donnie shows up again; yellow and red on his chest and a black bandanna wrapped around his wrist.

It’s enough that he doesn’t feel like they’re completely gone.

 

\--/--

 

Day 110.

They find an intact human skull near their latest rest stop, missing its front teeth.

Donnie is admittedly desensitized to horror at this point, and can’t stop himself from joking that the skull reminds him of Casey. Raph seems to get something of a memory flash from it, and suggests with a wicked grin they make a tribute with it.

Donnie ties the black bandanna around the skull, once they’ve wired up the self-destruct bomb. He laughs to himself, and figures it’s something Casey would’ve appreciated more than just a plain old wristband.

Besides, it’s not like Donnie could ever forget the one and only Casey Jones. Even  _Raph_ , in all his amnesic glory, hasn’t properly forgotten Casey Jones. No one who has ever met Casey Jones could forget him, whether they wanted to or not.

Donnie pats the skull after he’s done, and imagines Casey laughing himself sick over the tribute. It’s a good image.

 

\--/--

 

Day 113.

Raph remembers Leo, briefly.

It’s long enough to cause another breakdown, before he compartmentalizes the memories again. Donnie watches as Raph cries himself out, and then forgets why he’d been doing so hours after.

He hasn’t remembered April or Casey longer than a few seconds, or more clearly than a few flashes. Their father, either. Just listened to stories about their humans and their parent, and seemed wistful and frustrated. Donnie doesn’t know if those memories will resurface any time soon.

But, at least Raph remembers somewhat that there were more than just the two of them. It’s enough Donnie doesn’t feel as alone as he could, with his senseless body and digital memories.

 

\--/--

 

Day 114.

Donnie’s comes to the conclusion large memory recollections may have more adverse effects than they do positive ones. Raph can’t handle the bulk of his memories, likely because of just how horrible a lot of their life experiences have been, and keeps compartmentalizing them whenever they surface.

Donnie doesn’t blame him for not wanting to remember parts of his life. They’ve been through a lot of bad patches.

He still wishes Raph remembered, though.

He settles a compromise with himself. Donnie will just keep talking casually about their pasts, and let the memory recollections come and go as they do. No more pushing for Raph to remember constantly. The healed scar across his skull is a reminder how much damage Raph had gone through, and is still going through as they figure out life in the wasteland.

Donnie is a little lonely still, but Raph is still himself, and treats  _Donnie_  like himself, so amnesia can be tolerated.

It hurts. It will probably always hurt. But Donnie will take what he can get. What he can  _keep._

 

\--/--

 

Days 115 – 130.

Donnie observes the scattered collections of mutants have started forming societies. Individual clans and social codes for each one.

It’s a little strange and some part of him is awfully jealous of them, whenever he and Raph roll through friendly settlements. Well, friendly is a loose term. It’s mostly just the ones that don’t shoot on sight that could be considered that.

There’s still a lot of warring, and infighting, and just general chaos all around- but mutants as establishing themselves as real people now. They’re making a place in a toxic world full of danger and drought.

Donnie wishes he was still properly alive, so he could be a part of it. As it stands, he’s an oddity even now. Automated machines are highly, highly rare in the wastelands- let alone ones that snark back when they’re ordered to do something.

Donnie mourns the fact that the brief few months he hadn’t been a freak of nature, up in space, are long since passed. He less so mourns the fact that he’s not starving or dying of thirst. It’s hard enough keeping Raph fed and hydrated; if Donnie needed sustenance too they might really have trouble.

It doesn’t stop him from watching food being eaten, even rancid or scavenged, and wishing he could eat some too.

 

\--/--

 

Day 144.

 _“…Raph what if none of this is real? What if it’s just the last of my thoughts spasming as a rock crushes my skull? What if it’s_ your _thoughts spasming as a rock crushes your skull?”_

“…Donnie it’s three in the morning, what the fuck.”

_“Or! This could all be a simulation my real self created out of boredom, to see how artificial intelligence copes with the landscape we’ve been placed inside of. I wouldn’t put it past me. Real me was awfully dark when he didn’t sleep enough and got into the caffeine pills.”_

“Oh. My god. Shut up.”

_“You should listen to me more closely, Raph. I might be accomplishing self-awareness as we speak.”_

“Could you be self-aware of what an enormous asshole you are?”

_“Yes. I’m enjoying it.”_

“Holy fuck go back to sleep.”

_“I have a full battery charge, Raph, sleep mode is at least ten more hours away-”_

“ _Donnie!”_

_“Nervous breakdowns are better when they’re shared, Raph.”_

 

\--/--

 

Day 199.

“… _I honestly have no idea why you’ve grown hair,”_  Donnie says, examining the furry monstrosity making itself at home on Raph’s face.  _“Maybe it’s the mutagen particles saturating our atmosphere?”_

“What do they have to do with this?” Raph asks, batting Donnie’s hands away from his mustache. Donnie wants to shave it right this second. It’s horrible on so many levels.

 _“Well, my scanners say these have the genetic makeup of something close to a plant, and you_ were _assimilated into being a swampthing’s pet for a while there. This might be your former status as an enthralled plant creature making a comeback.”_

“…the words that just came out of your mouth actually make less sense than anything else you’ve ever said.”

_“I don’t have a mouth. Did you know I had to syphon the infection out of your system practically by hand? That was one heck of a night, whew. I had to invent a whole new procedure in under an hour. The infection itself was quite interesting, though. It was very similar to some fungi that’s found in the rainforests near the equator, taking over the host’s mind once infected and compelling them to climb up into the canopy to get at sunlight-”_

“Please stop.”

_“Then please shave your face, Raph. I don’t have a stomach anymore and I feel sick looking at it. Turtles shouldn’t have hair.”_

“But you just said it’s a plant thing.”

_“It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s disgusting.”_

Raph smirks at him. “Maybe I’ll keep it.”

Donnie recoils in horror.  _“Oh my god you wouldn’t.”_

“I would.”

_“Raph. You’re disgusting.”_

 

\--/--

 

Day 200.

The cussing out Donnie gets afterwards is  _so worth it,_  once he’s blowtorched off Raph’s horrendous facial hair.

 

\--/--

 

Day 234.

They’re legal adults today, according to the thoroughly desecrated government that used to run the country.

Donnie and Raph share a toast under the night sky, a slightly lonely celebration.

“ _We are now exactly one year older,”_  Donnie says, throwing his empty cup over his shoulder.  _“How do you feel, Raph?”_

“Dunno,” Raph says. He drains his cup of bubbling water they’d been saving. “I don’t really remember anything before this. How about you?”

 _“Oh I don’t really age anymore. In fact, so long as I never go BOOM, I’m functionally immortal now!”_  Donnie says brightly.  _“I’ll probably live decades longer than you do, and anyone else who is currently living in the wasteland. I promise I’ll give you a good burial, should I survive whatever horrible catastrophe finally gets you. What do you want on your grave, Raph?”_

“…existential crisis, again?”

_“Ohhhh big time.”_

Donnie is staring the prospect of a life without definite end. Raph is growing older, while Donnie is remaining ageless. If he isn’t blown up, or carved into pieces for scrap metal, then Donnie will have to watch his brother die slowly without him. And he’s not sure he can take that.

Raph claps Donnie on the shoulder, and then drags him across the rock they’re sitting on to hold Donnie in a one armed hug.

“I’m not dying yet, Donnie. I’m gonna be a pain in your ass for years to come. I’m not gonna leave you alone any time soon, and you can count on that. I’m not going anywhere.”

Donnie laughs, viciously wishes that promise could be kept without any doubts, and shares his twenty first birthday with the only member of his family he still has.

 

\--/--

 

Day 256.

Donnie realizes he doesn’t remember what it felt like to touch someone else.

He realizes he’s forgotten what April’s hand felt like, or Casey’s hoodies, or Leo’s mask tails, or Mikey’s shell, or his father’s fur…

He  _remembers,_  but he doesn’t. And something in him breaks because of it.

He has to let it go. Keep moving forwards.

Stopping now might just break him in ways that will last.

 

\--/--

 

Day 300.

Donnie wonders what happened to their alter timeline selves, way up there in the cosmos. He wonders what happened to Renet and all her time shenanigans. He wonders if any of them see what’s happened to his world, his family,  _him-_  and turned their backs on them purposefully.

He’s not sure he can properly resent them. Fixing an entire world that’s completely and thoroughly fucked over is a daunting task.

He still wonders what the fuck they’re doing, though. He hopes the other version of himself and his family get to have better lives, and he hopes Renet knows he can’t quite forgive her for not preventing the apocalypse.

 

\--/--

 

Day 364.

One full year since the world got turned on its head, rearranged, and reborn.

They drive near the borders of New York, meet colonies of deranged and mutated former-humans, and deduce NYC is no more hospitable to sentient life than it was last year.

Donnie decides to give up on hoping they’ll find their family. They’ve driven from one side of the country to the other, and Donnie has scanned every single settlement or roving gang. He’s found not even a trace of their family members.

If they’re out there, in the vastness of the growing deserts, Donnie doubts they’re ever going to run into them.

He really misses his family. He misses the ease of long distance communication. He misses the fucking  _internet._

Donnie wonders briefly if his body has decomposed fully, somewhere in the hellhole New York has become. He morbidly wonders what it would be like, looking at his own skeleton.

And it is his. Like his brother had said, at this point, who really cares besides Donnie if he’s the original or not? Donnie’s decided that even if he is a copy, or an imprint, or a snapshot of someone else- then fuck it, he’ll live his life anyways.

He’s alive as anyone in the wastelands. He’s trying to survive in it just like everyone else, he’s fighting for resources and to protect the people he cares about. He’s carving out a life in the fallout of an apocalypse, and he’s got as much right as any other thinking, feeling, caring being to call himself alive.

And Raph calls him his brother, and that’s enough for Donnie. That’s enough.

 

\--/--

 

Day 365.

Donnie gives a small prayer as they drive away from New York. He’s never been very religious, or even spiritual, but he’s someone who transferred their entire self into a new body. Maybe miracles are real, maybe someone is listening.

He’s not searching for his family anymore, but he still sends out a prayer that if they’re alive, that they’re doing alright.

He prays a little harder for April and Casey. Between the two of them, tempers and split second decisions feeding off one another and coming out  _explosive_  for it, Donnie is entirely sure they’ll have gotten themselves into the worst dangers out of all of them.

He remembers again, the last time he’d seen them. Back to back as the droids closed in, looking absolute in the face of an army and ready to take every enemy on without hesitance, even with blood and bruises all over them.

Donnie wishes he’d said goodbye, or good luck, before they separated.

Donnie prays for his best friends, and hopes whoever is looking down on his miserable planet will hear a robot’s prayers, too.

He misses them as fiercely as he does his brothers, every single day. And he hopes they’re okay.

 

\--/--

 

Day 0, Donnie brought himself back to life. Day 1, he asked himself if he really had or not.

Day 7803, he doesn’t care anymore.

The sun is merciless, scorching the world with a temperature of 134 degrees Fahrenheit, and Donnie feels none of it on top of the Shellraiser’s roof. He sits in his gun chair, watching and scanning the miles that roll by, and keeps his cooling systems from letting his internal mechanisms overheat.

Raph is inside, uncomfortably hot and bitchy because of it. Donnie leans back and feels a little smug that he can look at the sun directly, and practically lounge beneath it, without issue.

Part of him still wants to feel the sun. Still wants to have a pulse and hunger pangs and the need to drink water. He still wants the ability to dream again, to feel the texture of Raph’s scales and scars when he stitches his brother up, and to maybe shed tears, just once more.

He tries to focus on his battle ready body, and how well he can protect Raph without ever needing more than a few hours to recharge between fights. He tries to focus on the fact that he’s figured out how to rip songs directly out of his memories and hook them into the stereo systems. He tries to focus on the fact that even after Raph is gone, Donnie will still be around to remember his brother and all of their family.

After a few years of practice, he’s gotten pretty good at succeeding.

Donnie hums a melody their father used to, when he was dicing vegetables in the kitchen for dinners. A melody Donnie remembers humming along with back then, Mikey adding nonsense lyrics as he saw fit, and Leo and Raph joining in for the chorus. A melody that will forever be perfectly preserved in Donnie’s databanks, even if he lives another two hundred years.

It clashes with the loud rock music Raph is playing inside the war rig, but Donnie kind of enjoys the clashing.

There’s not a cloud in the sky, they’ve got another four hundred miles before the next settlement, and Donnie can’t feel even a hint of the sun’s rays.

He figures it’s quite the lovely day.


	2. A&C - part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world burns green on ground zero, and April barely shields them from the flames. For that, she and Casey live through the mutagen bomb fallout.
> 
> But how far is too far, trying to carve out their survival in the wastelands?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i'm back, armed with more angst and way more words than last time.
> 
> i guess i just love the humans of the team more than i thought, considering this is even bigger than the first oneshot and still only half done. i'll hopefully roll back in with the next part in a few days.
> 
> ciao for now.

The world burns green on ground zero, and April barely shields them from the flames.

Her powers pulse in her skull, throbbing hotly as she endures the blast force. She feels blood vessels break in her nose as her forcefield is battered against, but April doesn’t let the pain break her. She’s aching head to toe and her eye sight is blacked out by searing green, but she doesn’t lose concentration of keeping the psychic bubble intact.

Casey’s body is still curled around hers, from when he’d cried out just before the blast and thrown himself on top of April. Trying to act as a human shield against something that would have killed them both anyway.

April feels the rapid pace of Casey’s heart, right by her ear, and she holds strong under the onslaught. Its steady beat is all she can focus on, outside the blistering energy engulfing the world.

 

\--/--

 

When the worst is over, April knows exactly when it peters off. The tidal wave of energy dissipates abruptly, leaving only traces.

Blood drips from her nose, staining her front. There’s a massive throbbing migraine taking root in her skull, and as much as April would like to drop the shield and give herself relief, she can’t.

“…shit,” Casey whispers, becoming aware of the situation as well.

“It’s at least half the building,” April manages in a rough voice, coughing as blood slides down her throat. Her sight is still blocked by Casey’s body, but she knows. She doesn’t have to actually _see_ the rubble they’re buried under to know it’s there.

“Shit. Shit. Okay, can you lift it? You got enough in the tank for that?”

April’s head starts to swim hotly; the weight of the building growing heavier with each passing moment. “I. I don’t think so.”

Casey sucks in a panicky breath. April senses the wash of fear over his emotions, though his voice doesn’t show it when he speaks.

“Alright. I didn’t think you would.” His arms tighten around her, pressing April’s ear closer to his thrumming heart and shallowly breathing lungs. “Okay, plan. I’ve seen disaster movies where they like, get into a safe spot? Think you can move things around so the building’ll hold itself up?”

April’s own breathing is starting to grow shallow, the weight of her psychic burden spreading through her body. She risks precious concentration casting out her awareness, searching along the broken concrete and metal for a way to secure their area.

She finds a collection of broken concrete that will suit their needs. The question is whether or not she’ll have the strength to actually _move_ everything, and still not drop the bubble and get them crushed.

It _burns,_ drawing out her power and forcing it to give more, _more,_ more than she’s used since- since-

(-Donnie’s body, suspended in air, his words and eyes and outstretched hand, _pleading_ to her-)

-since years ago.

April’s voice cracks as she cries out, physical agony running through her as she maneuvers stone that will save their lives. Her head is filled with energy that swells against her skull, too much to contain and yet _still not enough-_

April lets her body slump, channeling all her awareness into lifting hundreds of tons of rubble into position. She faintly hears Casey’s voice, but she can’t answer. Her teeth clench and she tastes blood, everything _burning_ as she lifts, shoves, and drags the rubble.

Her forcefield fails, just as the last stone is moved.

April hears Casey yell, hears cracking of rock and screeching of metal, and she waits to see if this is where they’ll die.

For a fearful, tense moment, nothing happens. And then it keeps not happening.

April lets out a sigh of relief. The concrete bubble she’s built will hold, at least for now.

“Hey, April? April. April. Hey, answer me.”

April feels her eyelids slide shut.

“Fuck, don’t do that! Don’t pass out on me now-!”

She lets the agony of wakefulness slip away, and drops into nothingness.

 

\--/--

 

April doesn’t know what she dreams, but the way her palms are slick and her heart beats unevenly tells her it wasn’t pleasant. The blood from her nose is still in her mouth, coagulated in her throat, and she comes up from sleep hacking.

“Oh Jesus- hey, cool, you woke up,” Casey says, and he’s still wrapped around her like a shield. He doesn’t sound nearly as nonchalant as his words are trying to be. “That’s a good thing, ‘cause, uh. I was getting a little worried there.”

April still feels like death warmed over and she can’t see anything but blackness, but at least she’s still breathing. With how things have gone, that’s an achievement. “How long?” she asks, voice feeling ragged as she speaks. She swallows dryly. It barely helps.

“Like… a few hours at least?” Casey supplies. “You went down hard, Red.”

April groans, shifting around uncomfortably as bruises make themselves known. Her temples ache and her side isn’t much better; she feels rocks digging in and unforgiving concrete under those.

“Why can’t I see anything?” she asks next, and tries to not let her voice give away fear she’s gone blind.

“’cause I can’t either,” Casey says, patting her back absently. “We’re buried pretty deep; no light or anything. We got air, though, so it’s not sealed tight.”

April notes that the air they’re breathing only feels somewhat stale, and it’s not sweltering in their hiding hole from body heat. It’s definitely better than it could have been, considering April passed out and left Casey without any way to escape slow suffocation.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, hating the slight slur to that. She still feels exhaustion in every part of her aching body, but that’s no excuse.

“For passing out? Dude, you held an entire building off us. I think you’re excused for taking a nap.”

April says, _“hrn,”_ in response, disagreeing but not outright. She hurts everywhere, but at this point it doesn’t matter. If there was an explosion big enough to knock down _buildings…_

Something has gone very wrong.

“Did you call the brothers?” April asks.

“Tried. No cell service at all,” Casey replies, which shouldn’t be _possible._ Not after the upgrades Donnie put into their phones; the only place they can’t get service would be the moon.

“That’s not good,” April allows, but doesn’t let the dread creep in. It could just be Casey’s phone. Broken in the chaos of fighting. April is going to hold onto that possibility until it’s impossible to.

“So how’re we getting out of here?” Casey asks, even though they both know there’s only one way. In all likelihood, no one is coming any time soon. If the green light of the explosion was anything to go by, it’s safe to say the world outside is probably a disaster zone.

April turns, moving out of Casey’s protective curl and forcing herself up onto all fours. She feels her katana clatter as she gropes for it, and clenches it in her fist with sudden desperation to be armed properly.

She rises slowly, and her head meets the top of their shelter only halfway out of a hunch. April places her palm against it, reaching into her reserves of power and sending out a slow pulse to get the lay of things. It makes sharp pain burst in her skull, and April swallows nauseous bile.

“Only one way out,” she says, and prepares herself for the discomfort of using so much power again within hours of each burst.

“Be careful, I don’t want you passing out on me again,” Casey cautions, for once the voice of sensibility.

April snorts. They’re long past being careful. This became a race to find their friends and regroup the second green light enveloped the world.

April prays hard and fierce that the brothers will be alright until she digs herself and Casey out of this, and won’t be in as rough shape as she’s likely to end up.

April digs in her heels, and the concrete jungle around them shudders violently. Stone cracks and grates, metal warps with high pitch sounds, the world itself groans as she applies brute force to physics and _shoves._

April screams, and feels as though she’s become Atlas. Lifting the weight of the earth on her back and standing tall regardless. She distantly feels fresh blood leak down her face, down her throat. Her temples throb so harshly her vision goes spotty. Somewhere, Casey’s voice speaks to her.

She thinks he’s saying he’s got her, that she can do this, but she can’t tell for sure. Her heart is thundering too loudly.

Light breaks through the blackness. Daylight flooding through holes in the rubble.

April’s voice is raw as she gives a final push, and throws aside the huge slabs of concrete she’s suspended in the air. It’s an explosion of dust and sound, and April feels her legs giving out.

Casey’s arms catch her, supporting April as her world tilts sickeningly. Her awareness is hazy and broken up into snatches; everything coming in and out of focus. She hears Casey mutter an oath under his breath, and April’s eyes finally refocus on reality.

There’s smoke filling the air, coming from buildings near and far away. Their view is obscured somewhat by building rubble surrounding them, but April can see in the distance that the rest of the city is no better off than they are. Screaming fills the air, mingling with the sounds of things breaking.

April shivers. Primal instinct in the back of her aching skull is already telling her to run and hide. None of the screams sound human.

“We gotta go,” Casey says, voice low. April vaguely nods in agreement. She sheathes her sword across her lower back; forcing her feet to start limping along with Casey’s arm holding her up. They clamber out of the hole in fits and bursts; April’s fingers slipping clumsily as she fights the lightheaded aftermath of her powers, trying to resist the urge to pass out again and give into sweet painless oblivion.

They make it to the top, and that’s when shit really gets fucked up.

 

\--/--

 

April and Casey are both slick with sweat and other fluids by the time they find safety. Sides heaving and weapons clutched in death grips. The things that have been pursuing them have finally lost their scents; becoming preoccupied instead with attacking a smaller, less difficult to kill prey.

April tries to erase the horrifying images of men and women and _children’s_ faces, warped and stretched and oozing and cracking apart to expose rows of teeth as far from humanlike as _possible-_

She fails to erase the images, and slides down the wall of their chosen hiding spot. The restaurant kitchen they’ve found themselves in is dark, except for the windows letting in light. There hasn’t been a single scuttle of awkwardly mutated legs yet, and April ignores the painful migraine backlash to double check.

“We’re alone,” she gasps raggedly, and Casey lets out a whoosh of desperate air. He slides down beside her; just as covered in murky blood as she is, and flushed with adrenaline still.

They huddle together for a long few moments; shoulder to shoulder and focusing on easing the cramps in their sides. They’ve been running for what feels like hours, barely escaping each new creature they encountered. The fact that they’re alive is incredible, and more than feels like devil’s luck.

But the brothers. Where are the brothers.

They would have gotten in contact by now, Donnie hasn’t _ever_ let a communication breakdown last this long. It’s dangerous to all of them, falling out of carefully practiced sync and losing track of team members. They’re a unit. They move together or in monitored pairs. They don’t fall apart unless something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

April is so painfully scared for her friends; it’s a livid well of emotion in her stomach. She’s scared for them, and her father, too. She scared for all of them.

This feels like something worse than even the Kraang invasion. The air outside stings in her throat and it looks like nearly all of New York has been transformed by the mutagen bombs. They’ve only seen a scant few normal humans thus far, and all of them have been smears of red across the ground; limbs torn off and entrails in the mouths of what everyone else has become.

April puts her head on Casey’s shoulder. He puts his head on hers.

“…I think we lost,” April says, small and scared.

“What gave it away?” Casey says, equally terrified sounding.

Neither of them laughs at the sour joke. They stay huddled in their safe spot for a while longer, until they stop feeling too tired to keep moving, and then they get up and take advantage of their surroundings.

They rehydrate, eat some protein bars they find in a nearby staff room, and April tries to find a signal despite having failed a dozen times already.

Nothing. It’s like the whole world has gone dark, and April has a bad feeling that’s not changing time soon.

April washes her face of blood before they head back out. Her eyes are bloodshot and her nasal passages feel tender. She looks at herself in the mirror, and sees a face that’s pale with grim determination staring back at her.

“We’ll find them,” she whispers to herself in the washroom. It’s a promise made on the blood staining the porcelain in front of her, and on the blood they’ve all spilt together as a team. As a family.

April drinks more water, and unsheathes her sword as she returns to Casey’s side. They nod to one another as they slip back out into the chaos of their city; moving as quickly as they can, and not straying an inch further than they have to from each other’s side.

 

\--/--

 

“I have to find my family,” Casey had said to her, while they were refueling and resting. He hadn’t made it a request. It was a statement of his next move.

“I know,” April had replied, and without having to say so, agreed that they needed to find Casey’s family first.

Casey’s apartment complex is closest. April’s is further east from here, and further still from there is the lair. They’ll find Casey’s family first, and then move along the line to collect everyone else and meet up at the lair with the brothers. That’s the defacto place they go when something goes to shit, and the situation is as far into that zone as possible.

April chooses to expend precious strength on helping Casey jump between buildings. Its better they take the rooftops than keep going on the ground; none of the mutated humans seem to be able to fly (yet), and they don’t know _what_ could be lurking in the sewers. The high road is the safest road for now.

They pass a cellphone tower that’s sparking and broken at the top, and extending from it long lengths of telephone wire smoke worryingly. April guesses that’s one of the reasons why their cellphones have no signal.

She boosts Casey’s jumps with her powers, guiding him the distance he wouldn’t make on his own. They’re moving fast as they can without exhausting themselves; hockey stick and sword respectively kept at the ready at all times for a rooftop neighbor. April realizes around two minutes out from Casey’s apartment that she’s lost her tessen, and the loss aches fiercely.

She’s depleted in strength from using her powers nearly nonstop for hours, and now she’s down a weapon that was not only the first one she ever used, but one of her most deadly. It’s a blow that shakes her to the core, for whatever reason. Probably that it was the first time master Splinter had recognized her; seeing her not just as a pupil, but as someone he _valued._ Someone he loved.

April keeps herself steady despite it. She leaps over an alley with Casey and doesn’t let the loss ruin her concentration of keeping them moving, keeping them alive. They arrive on top of Casey’s complex within a few more leaps, and he charges for the rooftop entrance barely after touching down.

April snags his elbow just as he grasps the handle. “ _Wait,_ Casey.”

Casey whirls on her, and she sees tremulous control in his eyes. He’s shaking, from adrenaline and fear both, and the need to find his sister and father is a palpable tension in him.

“What.” he grits out, hockey glove tight on the knob.

April licks her lips nervously; she doesn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but. “We don’t know what we’re walking into,” she says carefully, gentle as possible. “Casey, you. You know it could be bad. You have to. Be ready.”

His arm shakes in her grip.

“I know.” Casey says, jaw tight.

April squeezes his elbow once, and then lets him go. She pretends very hard she can’t feel the soul deep dread radiating from him.

The complex is one of the few not on fire. It however isn’t empty. They have to fight barely a floor down the stairwell, and April tries not to see the face of an elderly woman on the creature they bash in the temple of, sending its body plummeting down to the ground floor. Casey is moving the second the threat is removed, and April follows without word. Time is ticking down fast, horrifyingly fast, and they’re not even sure if Casey’s family has any time left to begin with.

They avoid detection of the creatures swarming below, all their attention on the fresh and still twitching corpse. April and Casey plaster their backs to the wall outside the third floor door; making eye contact and silently counting down together. April flings it open on three and Casey is ready with an explosive puck the exact same second.

He throws it into the mouth of a behemoth mutant, and they’re splattered with off-color red as its skull explodes. The detonation attracts attention of the creatures below and everywhere else in the complex, and they haul the door shut and jam it. Claws and limbs begin banging on it barely three heartbeats later, and they’re already turned to engage the hostiles coming out of apartments.

April decapitates two with learned brutal efficiency. Casey demolishes the frontal lobe of one; killing it with unsettling intensity, and double tapping just to be thorough by having April slash its neck wide open. The howls on the other side of the exit behind them spur them on before the bodies are even done spasming.

Casey gets to his apartment door two steps ahead of April, eyes wide with desperation as he jams in his house key. He all but wrenches it open as he dives into his home.

“ _Dad!”_ Casey yells, abandoning all caution as he storms through the apartment. “ _SAM!_ Fuck, fuck, fuck- _DAD! SAM!”_

April tails him, eyes on her own tail in case of surprise pursuers, and in the half second she’s looking backwards, something big tears out of an adjacent room.

Casey gets slammed against the wall with a heavy thud, pinned by three arms and wheezing breathlessly for it. The thing holding him turns five unevenly placed eyes on April, opening a maw large enough to swallow her head whole and roaring.

April sees brown eyes, and knows their kin.

“ _Dad!”_ Casey shouts hoarsely, coughing as his warped parent crushes him against the plaster. His eyes, the same eyes as the monster, are wide with terror and grief. “Oh god- no- dad it’s _me,_ dad, dad, _c’mon- look at me, LOOK AT ME-!”_

Two of the eyes move to look at Casey, and neither shows any recognition. The other three remain pinned on April, and what remains of Casey’s father lashes out with its free arms.

April, on instinct, cuts of two of the hands grabbing for her. Hot blood sprays her and the floor both.

Casey howls like she’s just cut off his own hands. She might as well have.

 _“NO!”_ Casey yells, thrashing in his father’s grip.

That’s when a second creature clambers over Casey’s father, dual layered jaws wide and a high pitched scream pouring out of it. April doesn’t have to listen to Casey’s cry of anguish to know it’s the remnants of a little girl, given away by the smallness of the creature, and the lone surviving pigtail hanging lopsided off its head.

 _“Sam!”_ Casey sobs, and April feels every inch of his pain as his little sister bears down on her.

April is overwhelmed for a moment by the sheer horror of their situation. Of the irreparable loss Casey has just suffered. In her gut, April’s intuition knows that this time…

There’s no fixing this.

Her head rings with pain, physical and emotional both, as she extends her hand, and blasts away their attackers.

Casey hits the floor on his hands and knees, gasping as he inhales and then coughs. He’s up again a split second later, swaying as he lurches towards his family; the two mutated humans scrabbling against the far back of the living room where April threw them.

April snags the back of Casey’s gear, holding onto the straps of his makeshift vigilante backpack. He lets out an animalistic sound as she hauls him back, keeping him from running right to his death.

“Casey,” April says.

“No, _no,_ they’re- we can fix this, Donnie will know- he can _fix this,”_ Casey pulls against her grip. “Let go, let _go._ They’re still in there, he- he didn’t kill me right off- we can-”

“ _Casey,”_ April says.

“I can’t _leave them_ like this,” Casey pleads. “April- I can’t leave them, they’re- they’re my dad, my _sister-”_

Casey’s family finally righten themselves; his little sister climbing onto the back of their father and the both of them turning slavering maws towards them. Howling without a hint of humanity left.

April makes the decision Casey can’t.

She uses her telekinesis to get him out the door, and slams it behind them. The impact of his father and sister against it jars the whole wall, cracks lacing through it, and at the same moment the stairwell door gives way under a mass of bodies.

April keeps Casey’s arm in her grasp, and blows open the hallway window with a psychic blast. They dive out it one after another, and April catches them in a gentle pillow of invisible energy. As she lifts them up and away, the creatures come pouring out the shattered window and scuttle around the side of the building.

April sees Casey’s family among the creatures; his little sister still clinging to their father’s back, and their parent howling at anything that draws too close to them.

She feels her own eyes growing wet as Casey’s ragged sobs join the cacophony of rage and misery.

 

\--/--

 

They find a roof that’s empty, and April’s legs collapse under her as they drop down. She numbly releases her sword, hearing it clang against the concrete. Her head swims and her nose is bleeding slightly, but it’s nothing compared to the ache settling in her chest.

April fumbles blindly towards Casey, vision spotty in places, and has her hand slapped away.

Casey screams at her. He screams at her for making him leave his family, for refusing to let him help them, for hurting them, for not letting him at least _try_ to get through to his father and sister, for- for-

April finds enough strength to draw him close, even as he tries to push her away. Casey shudders, and cries, and drops his weapon to clutch her back with painful tightness.

Wordlessly and brokenly, he sobs into her shoulder. April, knowing already what will lay for her in her own family apartment, lets vicious tears of grief flood her eyesight.

They stay there for as long as they can allow agonizing loss to paralyze them, and then force themselves to move on.

 

\--/--

 

They spend the first night huddled on a roof, watching the world burn with acrid black smoke through the gaps in the old water tower they’re hiding in. The night came with a sudden and sweeping speed, and they still hadn’t found a way to get past any of the mutated humans swarming the sewers near the lair. They’ve been forced to take cover for the night, or risk being devoured by something with better vision and more strength to spare than them.

April has them sleep in shifts. It doesn’t quite work, given they’re both reeling from incomprehensible horrors and loss. But exhaustion and adrenaline fallout takes its toll, and a handful of times their eyes slip shut and their breathing becomes deep.

April is on her third rotation, every sense extended to its limits and poised to catch movement nearby. Her head only aches now and again, given she’s only using ambient senses rather than telekinesis.

The image of her father’s body- warped to have an approximation of flightless fleshy wings and bulging eyes- is seared into her vision. Even though she’d known in her gut what had happened, that she couldn’t do anything to fix it- April had needed to know. To see with her own eyes, however much the sight is going to haunt her for the rest of her miserable, and likely short, existence.

She’d dreamed briefly that her father was eating her, tearing out her entrails with his teeth and claws, and she’d woken up sobbing.

Casey had held her until she stopped shaking, murmuring in her ear that it wasn’t real, that there wasn’t anyone here but them, and then agreed to let her take watch. She’s pretending he doesn’t let out a soft, terrified keen every dozen minutes. She wants to wake him up, pull him out of the nightmare’s grasp, but they need rest. Even rest riddled with bad dreams like termites.

She settles for pressing even closer to his side, both of them shivering slightly in the nighttime chill. Their weapons lay on either side of their huddle; barely a flinch away from being ready for a fight. It’s only so much a comfort.

April focuses as much attention as she can on the inhales and exhales of Casey’s lungs, and guards him through the next few hours. He returns the favor when the nightmares grow too intense, and he wakes with a stifled sob.

 

\--/--

 

Day 2 is something of a blur. The world has shifted in entirety in a single night, and it’s nearly unrecognizable.

April spends the first few hours of dawn opening all of her internal senses. She casts out herself out along her range, searching for familiar brain patterns, for the pulse and flow of thoughts that she knows as well as her own by now. She searches for the brothers until her nose begins to bleed.

And then she opens her eyes, feeling hot tears slipping down her cheeks.

“I can’t find them,” she whispers. “I. I can’t find them anywhere. It’s like they’re just… _gone.”_

Casey shifts out of his sentry position, crouching down in front of her with a forced calm in his expression. “Are you sure?” he asks, eyes searching hers. “Maybe they’re just. You know. Knocked out, or- or sleeping.”

April shakes her head. “I should still be able to sense them. I can’t find _anything_ of them, Casey,” The last part comes out in a horrified breath, sickening worry sinking into her bones.

_Leo, Raph, Donnie, Mikey. Where are you?_

Casey nods in jerks. “Okay. Okay. Fuck. They can take care of themselves, we’ve. We’ve seen worse shit,” he says, like he’s trying to convince himself. “They’ll be alright. They’re always alright.”

April wipes the dribbles of blood off her chin, smearing it onto her sleeve with all the blood from yesterday, and doesn’t say anything. She dries her tears and gets up, hand on the hilt of her sword and mind sliding things into order.

Grieving later. Survival now.

They scavenge for food, for supplies, and for shelter. They have to kill five more mutants to get a bulk of bottled water out of a convenience store, avoid six ambling around the interior of a clothes store they visit, and swiftly execute another three to pillage an arms depot. The weight of bullets and cold gun metal hang on April’s body as they escape detection, heavy with their severity and promised distribution of death.

They take up watch of the lair’s main entrances, using vantage points of apartments they clear of the mutants. The top floor is barricaded against wandering intruders, and they keep sharp watch for any that try climbing the outside. They make a change of clothes, discarding their usual uniforms for battle and pulling on blood free, significantly less crunchy feeling clothes from the rack of work uniforms they raided.

At least it’s another jumpsuit for April, which is a slight comfort. It’s plain, dark navy blue; that being the only choice besides bright orange. Casey meanwhile looks a little less than impressed with the pants he’s stuck with. They’re not as formfitting as his skinny jeans tend to be, but the black work jeans are thicker. Less likely to tear open during a fall or from a slash.

April counts the bullets to her shotgun, her pistol, and her big hunting rifle. Casey stares at the handgun in his palms, and only lets her teach him how to shoot because she coaxes him to.

April learned how to use guns after coming back from space. The weight of her old laser is one she sorely misses in her hands, even now. It had run out of charge only a short few days after they returned. She’s supplemented the hollow loss by signing up for a shooting range club.

She may fight with ninjutsu and clan honor, but the primal fear that lurks in the back of her skull, the one that always wakes up whenever they’re thrown into battle once again, demands she do everything possible to ensure she and her family survives. Even if it means pressing the butt of a shotgun to her shoulder and re-familiarizing herself with the feel of a trigger.

She never told the brothers, or Casey. A part of her had been somewhat ashamed, like she was somehow saying that ninjutsu wasn’t _enough._ Which is wrong. It’s what got her this far to begin with, and it’s what gave her a scary advantage over the other participants learning gun usage. Steely concentration and unflinching attitude as she learned to shoot dead center with real bullets, rather than burning light.

Ninjutsu isn’t just fanciful katas and age old weapons. It’s the bedrock for April’s ability to survive, along with the stubborn, furious determination to do so that it fostered in her. She wouldn’t trade her training for all the guns in the world.

April takes the pistol and shotgun with them when they make a rush for the lair. Casey grudgingly has his handgun strapped to his leg, but holds only his hockey stick in hand.

They don’t even make it to the subway tunnels.

The sewers, like April suspected, are _crawling_ with creatures. Former humans fill the sewers like insects in a hill, running or scuttling or sloughing along without any limbs at all. They’re overrun and outnumbered within minutes of slipping underground.

Due to the close quarters, April is forced to abandon her traditional method of killing- blades to flesh and bone- and shoves the barrel of her pistol into a creature’s eye and fires. The hot spray of blood is one she barely feels, mechanically moving onto the next target. Bone and marrow fly as she empties the chambers trying to make way for them.

She goes down, briefly, under the bulk of a mutant that’s the horrifying fusion of five people, maybe more. Its misshapen head and jointed jaws screaming at her, while its many fingered hands hold her against the side of the tunnel. It sends all the air whooshing from her lungs.

April grits her teeth, drawing up a swell of power, and throws it against the opposite wall in retaliation. She hears Casey yelling at her as he tries to get into the fray, stalled by his own attackers, and April has limited options as the mutant gets back on its multiple feet.

April fingers are somehow steady despite the onslaught of adrenaline in her system, and she swings the shotgun out of its holster across her shoulders. She cocks it just in time for the creature’s jaws to attempt biting her head off, and jams it into the back of its throat. She fires.

The sound is deafening in the tunnels, and April is temporarily blinded by viscera in her eyes. The weight of the creature falls on her, April’s legs buckling as she reacts too late to get out of the way, and she’s only saved from being flattened by Casey shoulder checking it sideways.

April rips the barrel of her shotgun free of the corpse’s gaping hole as it goes down, and whirls to fire on the thing chasing Casey. Its left shoulder explodes in red and it reels back just enough they have a chance to run.

April and Casey keep running, get under the nearest manhole opening, and April skips the climb up the latter. She blasts the cover out of the way, grabbing Casey’s hand and shooting them skyward before claws and teeth can catch their heels.

Hovering in the air above the street, April looks around for the thousandth time in two days, and barely recognizes what used to be the one safe ground she knew.

“Fuck that,” Casey spits, looking at the tangle of creatures pouring in and out of the manhole. “No way we’re getting past those guys. Not without a tank.”

He’s bleeding from his arm, where a mutant likely sliced through the new hoodie he’d put on. April sees the red on his skin, and realizes she’s got gouges in her arms, too. From the teeth of the mutant that she was nearly too late to get with the shotgun.

The weapon is heavy in her numb fingers, and she can feel shock vibrations starting to register in her arms. The crook of her shoulder aches from the kickback, and April decides then that medical care is priority over trying to get to the lair. At least for now.

They plan to keep scouting ways into the lair, but first they attend to medical needs. April escapes needing stitches by a slim margin, but Casey’s arm does need them. They spend further time dealing with _that,_ and it’s barely more pleasant than getting them in the first place.

The end of the world is still relatively fresh, so for now medical supplies is still easy enough to come by. April fights shakiness in her hands as she puts four amateur stitches into Casey’s arm, and tries to not flinch every time Casey hisses in pain. The numbing gel they’d found in the same clinic as the suture needle and thread doesn’t seem to be helping much.

“Just think,” April tries comforting. “it’ll look pretty badass when it’s all healed.”

Casey starts to say something, probably a bold and bragging statement to cover up other emotions, but he bites it off to avoid flinching badly as April sticks in the needle a fourth and final time.

She squeezes his hand tightly afterwards, and gives him a lollipop in an attempt at humor. It works enough he gives a weak grin and eats the sweet.

After that, they brave the risks of retrieving and stockpiling supplies. Water, food, and defenses. It takes more of the day hours than April would have wanted, but it’s all necessary. The lair for now is out of their grasp, and there hasn’t been a single sign of the brothers.

There hasn’t been a single sign of the brothers. Not one. For them, that’s unheard of. Wherever they go, no matter what they face, it’s never more than a few hours before contact is re-established. Or at least _something_ blowing up to signal where they are.

The only fires that rage are ones that happen on their own. April watches entire skyscrapers in the distance go up in smoke, and feels helpless in so many ways.

They try scouting for the remaining time in the day, but have to retire not more than an hour into patrol. Daylight wanes too fast, until twilight covers everything in a hazy grey, and they’re exhausted. Emotionally and physically. April aches head to toe, and despite having knocked back painkillers and insisted he go with her no matter what, Casey is lagging badly. They’re too wrung out to do anything useful anymore, and trying to will only get them killed.

They retreat to their chosen nest, and triple check all the defenses. April religiously counts their ammunitions pile, and ignores the way Casey stares at it. Stares at her as she cleans and oils the guns, lining up imaginary targets in her sights and readying herself for the eventuality of pulling the trigger.

Guns are different from swords. Bullets are different from what few kunai she’s got left. There’s a brutality to them a blade lacks. A finality.

You can direct the path of a sword with practice and intent, but a bullet can only go one direction once you fire it.

It finally hits her, long after the sun has set and she’s on her second watch, that April has been killing people. For two days, nearly continuously each time they go out, she has been killing _people._ Regular people, regular humans who have lives and loved ones. People who have likely never hurt anyone, and never warranted being murdered by a lone teenage girl playing judge, jury, and executioner.

People, all those mutants were _people,_ she’s killed aliens and mutants and things that were neither but never _humans,_ she never killed humans, she never was forced to the point where she would _have to,_ and now she’s spent an entire evening meticulously scrubbing herself of blood and viscera and cleaning her sword right to its hilt, wiping away stains of red from herself and her cold steel weapon that came from _humans she murdered-_

April chokes on bile, and throws up quietly as possible in the toilet that stopped flushing somewhere around 10am. Her body is wracked with guilt and horror and a dull resignation.

Even if they could fix this, there just wouldn’t have been any other way. It’s been kill or be killed from the first moment April and Casey clawed their way out from under that collapsed building, and April knows with a sinking dread that fact isn’t changing any time soon.

How many people did she kill today. How many men and women and children did she _murder._ How much blood now stains her hands.

April wastes precious energy and fluids crying into her hands, stifling sobs until she can push them back down into herself.

Day 2 blends into day 3 before she sleeps again, and there are only nightmares after that.

 

\--/--

 

Its day 3, and then 4, and then 5, and so on, to the point that April loses track.

They keep surviving. They keep trying to find a way into the lair’s tunnels, but even going to the very edges of their territory yields no entry options. April and Casey spend days on rooftops, drinking from bottled water and eating non-perishables, wracking their brains of a way in.

“I could probably clear a path with my powers,” April’s offers sometime on the sixth-ish day, though they’ve been down that route multiple times.

“And then you’d pass out on me trying to keep it clear,” Casey says, and tosses an empty plastic bottle across the street they’re perched above. It clatters against the top of a car, and momentarily disturbs the mutant chewing on the upholstery in it.

Casey lowers his arm, shifting his hockey stick between his hands. “No point in going in,” he says grimly. “if we can’t get back out in one piece. I’m all for fucking their shit up, Apes, but we don’t have backup right now.”

April hums in frustration, and ignores the gulf of worry they both feel regarding the brothers.

They alternate from days spent restlessly circling the lair’s territory, to days circling the edges of ground zero. As scared as they are for the brothers, they both look at the toxic green still bubbling in the epicenter of the impact and know it’d be suicide. Never mind that it would poison them, or at least Casey- the worst creatures are the ones that come crawling out of the zone, and they’re the hardest to kill, too. Sometimes April has to blow their heads off _twice_ before they’ll stop moving.

She’s numb by now to the fact that she’s killing humans. She has to be, or else the guilt will keep eating and eating and _eating_ at her, and April can already barely handle how badly she’s fraying. Casey is numbing himself, too, judging from how little hesitancy he shows when breaking their skulls open.

Neither of them talk about their respective mutated families, and they give wide berth to their old apartments.

April watches Casey grow wane and angry some days, a rictus snarl on his face as they dispatch mutants. Other days he acts like nothing is wrong, and that he was never attacked by his own father and sister. April doesn’t call him out on it, and he never calls her out on the fact that she runs from rather than kills any mutant that resembles her father.

The brothers stay gone. April still looks for them anyway, even as hope grows dimmer. She opens herself again and again to the flow of the universe, searching across the ocean of energies and minds in New York. Here and there she’ll find a mind that isn’t the tattered, spiraling mess that former humans have. But it’s never one of her boys, as much as she wills it to be.

She thinks they’re mutants. Different kinds from the tormented humans. Proper mutants, with thoughts and personalities and growing understanding of what they are.

The mutagen bombs may have wiped out New York’s human population, but April is starting to believe that it’s just given birth to a whole new generation of mutants, stemmed from surviving animals living in the city.

Her theory is confirmed when she and Casey meet one, sometime after she loses track of days. It’s a squirrel of all things, and the mutant only screams at them and runs before they can ask any questions.

“Well that’s new,” Casey mutters, watching the squirrel mutant zip across rooftops faster than April has ever seen something move. “Guess it makes sense, though. Mutagen equals mutants…”

“They didn’t even stick around to let us say hi,” April says, crossing her arms. “How rude.”

Casey quirks an eyebrow. “We’re not exactly friendly looking.”

April refuses to deign that with an answer, though she acutely feels the weight of her sword, pistol, and recently collected hunting knives. Casey isn’t much better; with his sports weapons, the single gun she can make him carry, and the scant black makeup he still smears under his eye sockets. Never mind the myriad of bruises and bandaged injuries they share between them.

They don’t manage to make contact with any of the mutants. The ones they do see are wide eyed and terrified, disappearing from sight within seconds of noticing April and Casey’s presence. Given the world they’ve been suddenly borne into, without anyone to guide them or give them safe refuge, April can understand the outright terror they show at everything.

But seeing the mutants stirs deeper and deeper ache in April, to see the brothers again. To know what _happened_ to them.

She didn’t even get to say goodbye to them, before they all got separated. It’s such a stupid, pointless thing, because they’d sworn they would stop the bombs, they’d _promised_ they’d all come home alive and well, and yet.

She still wishes she had.

April hurts, deep and thoroughly. The longer the days run together, filled with furious, scrabbling fights for survival, the worse the wound festers. She doesn’t know if they’re alive, doesn’t know if they’re dead, doesn’t know if they’ve been turned into one of the millions of unfortunate twisted creatures in their ruined city. She doesn’t know anything.

She doesn’t know _anything,_ about what happened or what _will_ happen, and that’s probably what’s killing her worst of all.

 

\--/--

 

April misses hot water and heated food and hot _anything_. The power cut out barely a day after the mutagen bombs dropped, taking with it nearly all technology. There are electric generators, that much April is painfully aware of, but the noise they produce would attract every mutated human for miles. They’d be inviting a swarm right to their location.

She hasn’t had a shower either, not since the plumbing went dead, too. The most they’ve been able to do is scrub themselves off with lukewarm water from bottles. April’s hair is suffering for it, and neither she nor Casey smell particularly good anymore.

It’s a vain thing to wish, given how much they’ve lost in such a short amount of time, but April would probably kill to take one more hot shower, and then chase it with a large hot meal. It wouldn’t matter what kind of meal, so long as it was hot and _fresh,_ and not made with any of the canned shit they’ve been living off of.

They’re not starving, and they’re not so dirty their reoccurring injuries fester with infection, but April is miserable on so many levels her temper sparks at the stupidest of things.

It’s bound to happen eventually, and it does, and they hit a day where one of them snaps at the other a little harsher than needed, and it sets off a chain of small fights. Their voices can’t go above a furious whisper level as they fight, or else risk attracting attention to their hideout, and that makes the whole experience even more infuriating.

It eventually leads to April storming out of their nest in the dead of night. She ignores Casey’s call after her, which isn’t so much a call but a parting jab, and melts into the night like she hasn’t in weeks.

Without Casey, it’s easier. She rings with misplaced anger, and it feels all too good to fall into old patrol routine. Without needing to expend focus and energy on Casey, April is just another silent shadow in the night. Its pitch black, not a single light for miles now that power is gone and the fires have dwindled to nothing, but April’s ambient senses have only grown in strength since she first started training them.

She can’t see _,_ but she still can _see._ Her human eyes see only faint outlines, but the bubble of awareness that surrounds her picks up everything she passes. Buildings, alleys, weak infrastructures, sleeping or prowling creatures. She knows exactly where everything is in relative to her position, and without Casey’s untrained footsteps hitting the rooftops loud enough to attract attention, April becomes a ghost.

She feels like one, sometimes. A leftover afterimage of the past. Here in the echoing fallout of a disaster they didn’t prevent, she’s one of two. The last two humans.

April skims over a street, floating on air, and doesn’t think on the fact that she isn’t really human at all.

She stops on the lip of a roof, and despite being unable to see much of anything, she knows she’s above one of the streets with a manhole leading to the lair. It’s one of the ones she used most frequently, because it was right next to the bus route that ran from her home.

For a dizzyingly impulsive moment, April considers just getting it over with and trying one more time. All this skirting around, all this _waiting,_ desperately trying to find a safe way in that will get them both back out alive- she’s so sick of it. She’s sick of waiting for a miracle chance to present itself, and she’s sick of miring in days and nights of worry and guilt and sourly lingering terror.

April could do it right now. With the sword on her back and the pistol on her hip and nothing else, she could try. Casey isn’t here to get hurt if she screws up, and without him in the way she could cut loose with her powers all she wants. She could burn herself out all the way through and collapse the concrete tunnels until she hit the lair. She could finally _do something._

April’s fists shake. Adrenaline and bitter rage clog her throat, and the desire to just throw herself into the fight presenting itself is nearly irresistible.

She could, she could, she could. And if she did every thought in her head beyond moving from one target to the next would disappear. An eerie and dreadful battle calm, and nothing would hurt anymore after that.

But what about Casey?

What if she died. Then what would he do without her? After everything they’ve already lost, and with the indefinite future looming ahead, how would he survive all alone?

April steps off the edge of the roof. She swallows tightly, and forces herself to turn away.

She can’t do that to him. She can’t make him live through all this misery on his own. She knows she wouldn’t be able to do it without Casey, so how could she even consider doing this to him?

She knows the answer without thinking of it. Knows the boil of white hot rage inside herself even more intrinsically than she knows she couldn’t survive her losses alone. The urge to pick a fight and just keep fighting until something gives, until its _over,_ is growing stronger the longer they hang in limbo.

She turns from the street and its tantalizing entrance into oblivion, and runs the other direction at a dead sprint. April keeps running, fighting the urge to turn back with every step, and her sides heave with desperate exertion to keep fighting that urge.

The world blends together, everything blurring as she pelts through the night. She has no destination in mind, just a certainty that she has to keep moving. If she stopped now, April feels like the quicksand they’ve been treading on would finally swallow her up.

April runs, keeps running, and loses track of time. She sinks into the rhythm of movement and shuts down everything else. It isn’t until dawn is creeping the horizon she comes back to herself enough to feel the cold sweat clinging to her skin and the raggedness of her burning lungs.

And in that moment of reconnecting with her body, April’s concentration on her surroundings slips, and she leaps across a street without checking what’s on the other side.

The eyes of at least a dozen mutagen afflicted humans swivel to look at her, and April’s thoughts disappear once again in a storm of panic and primal instinct.

Her sword is in her hand.

The mutants scream at her as they rush to defend their roost.

April doesn’t recognize the responding scream as her own until later, when the shrill, rage filled sound is ringing in her ears as it dissipates.

Before then, she hits the roof, and comes up swinging. She splits the face of one, slits the throat of the next, and leaps over the rest in one continuous blur. She runs, whirls on her heel, and swings onto the back of the first to dive at her. April’s opponents gut one of their own trying to get to her, and she’s off the corpse before it even falls.

Everything shatters from there, like brilliantly broken multicolor glass tumbling all together, and abruptly she’s standing alone on the roof, aching and covered in blood. More than half of it isn’t remotely her own, and a frightening part of her is disappointed the violence hadn’t drawn out longer.

April spits, feeling that she’s bitten her tongue at some point. The tang of iron raises bile in her throat, filling her nose and tastebuds both. It’s as she’s rubbing her left eye, wiping away a spray of blood that caught on her lashes, that she notices finally where she’s ended up.

She recognizes the logo of the building attached to the one she’s on; it’s neon sign long dark, but illuminated enough by the growing dawn that April can read it. It nudges knowledge she’d forgotten over the weeks, lost in the deluge of survival instincts.

April wipes more blood off her face, and finds herself actually starting to smile.

She steps over the bodies of the slaughtered mutants now littering the roof concrete, and starts running again. This time back towards the only anchor she’s got left in the wreckage of New York.

 

\--/--

 

When she comes in through the window, she’s met by the terrified whites of Casey’s eyes.

“ _April,”_ he breathes, and then louder, “Holy _fucking-_ I thought, I mean, when you didn’t come back- look I’m sorry I shouted, I was bein’ an ass, but you can’t-” he draws up short of her, noticing the blood all over her.

“You’re _hurt,”_ Casey says, and frantically starts patting her down, trying to find the wound and put pressure on it. April catches his hands, still grinning with all her teeth.

“Casey,” she says, hope blooming in her chest for the first time in forever. “you’re never going to _believe_ what I found.”

“That’s nice April but _hello,_ you’re _bleeding-”_

“It’s not mine! I think. I’m pretty sure.”

“Jesus Christ, what did you _do?”_

April draws him close, looking him in the eye and trying to get them to show their familiar spark of exuberance.

“I found a way _in,”_ April says, giddy with excitement.

Casey listens, and like matches on kindling, he steadily lights up brighter and brighter.

 

\--/--

 

TCRI, the Techno Cosmic Research Institute.

Before it came down to just them, the six of them had been working with the Utrom and their military connections; that being TCRI. Despite the distrust they held for each other- the brothers never would get along easy with the US government, and Casey and April’s loyalty to them spread that instinctive unease- they’d all agreed to work together to take out the re-emerging Kraang threat.

No one wanted another invasion or mass panic, not after how many the world had already suffered. The general public of earth was already having difficulty coping with the past ones; news of an imminent doomsday plot would tip the scales into total chaos.

So they’d tried to quickly and quietly take out Kraang Subprime and their armies.

It hadn’t worked, obviously.

TCRI and the Utrom had fallen within hours of each other. Without the Utrom to lean on, once the Kraang had overrun their bases in Dimension-X, the US military couldn’t keep up with the superior technology of the Kraang. Just before April and her family had strapped on their weapons to march out to war, they’d all watched on the lair television screen as massive fires blazed in military bases across America.

After that, the rest is history.

And now April and Casey are back, standing on the melted slag of the TCRI building. They’ve been here to confront enemies and allies both, and now they’re here to confront no one.

April is beginning to understand the brothers better. With no other humans left, April is slowly coming to terms with being two of a kind, like the brothers were four of a kind. She’d always known that they were isolated, but until now she hadn’t comprehended truly how alone they were.

Are. Are isolated.

She won’t write them off until she sees bodies. She owes them the benefit of doubt.

“Up or down?” Casey asks, staring at the skyscraper, and at the smaller, more spread out building they stand on. He hasn’t said a word about the corpses April has left spread around them. She’s grateful for that, since she won’t be forced to explain her sudden desire to throw herself into such a massive fight.

April glances at the top of the skyscraper, and notes how ruined its top floors are. She’d heard from all the brothers and Casey about spaceships stored there, but her guess is that there’s nothing left salvageable.

“Down,” she decides, since the smaller building is largely intact, and seems to be made up of huge individual hangers inside its business like appearance. That’s what her senses tell her, at least.

It’s way easier than she expected to get inside. Wrenching open powerless automated doors is simple enough, and they only meet one or two mutants along the way. It seems that in the wake of the Kraang attack, majority of the base’s staff had wisely run for the hills. Plus, there isn’t really any food source here other than the other mutants...

April doesn’t linger on the still unnerving cannibalism. Even weeks in, the fact that the mutants will eat each other without hesitancy is still horrifying. She is faintly grateful she’s still horrified by anything; the slow numbing of herself is getting to be deeply disturbing, when she can manage energy to be disturbed at all.

“Oh _fuck me,”_ Casey breathes when they finally breach a hanger’s entrance. His face is split with an enormous grin, ecstatic glee in his eyes. It’s the first time he’s actually smiled in days.

April hangs back, letting him use expertise she lacks for the most part. Casey acts like a kid in a candy store, running his hands along the sides of military grade vehicles and motorbikes. Some of them have their contents splayed open, halfway done being upgraded with Utrom tech, but some are completely finished.

Casey opens the hatch to one of them, and even from afar April can see the pulse of a Dimension-X crystal nestled inside it. Casey is mumbling to himself as she approaches, taking stock of all the advances the vehicle has been given and counting off all the weapons built into it. He turns an absolutely enamored smile on her, stroking a part of the engine.

“I think I’m in love,” he croons dramatically, cozying up further with the veritable tank. April rolls her eyes, smiling as her friend joyfully examines his prize from bumper to bumper.

“Think it’ll get us into the tunnels?” she asks, once she’s given him sufficient time to swoon.

“I think it’ll get us in and _then_ some,” Casey announces brightly. He cackles, swinging around from the other side of the massive truck to snag her in a tight hug; spinning April in a wobbly circle.

“You’re forgiven for scaring the shit out of me,” he says grandly, and April thinks his lips brush her ear as he steps back from her.

She tucks a stray bang out of her face, flushing in embarrassment. For a number of reasons. “I’m sorry about that, honestly,” April says, rubbing the back of her neck. Guilt squirms in her gut. “I just. I started running, and I didn’t know how to _stop,_ and… I don’t know. There’s no excuse. I’m sorry about the fight, and for disappearing.”

Casey waves her off. “The fight was stupid anyway, and this is the best make up present anyone ever gave me. Let’s call it even and go turn some mutants into roadkill, aight?”

Part of April wants to push for better reconciliation, but Casey isn’t going to have it. She lets it go, and instead turns her attention on the very attractive shine of something more her area of expertise, just across the floor from them.

While Casey fusses with their new ride, April drifts across the wide hanger to a collection of tables and shelves. Laid out on them are weapons meant to be integrated into the upgraded vehicles, and April’s tingling fingers find their way to the heft of a large laser rifle.

It glows a warm, toxic pink along its side, and April sighs in happiness as she cocks it, lines up her target, and reduces a nearby chair to blackened and melted pieces.

Casey hollers appreciatively at her show, and April shoots him a smirk before she sets to collecting all the firepower they can carry. Which is, to her absolute manic delight, a _whole fucking lot._

 

\--/--

 

April loves Dimension-X weaponry. This is just a fact about her. She loves that she doesn’t have to fuss with reloading the clip with bullets during a battle, and she loves that the crystals used to power them have a lifespan triple a human’s, maybe more.

Casey is equally appreciative, exampled by the signature _“GOONGALA!”_ he gives as they bust down the secret vehicular entrance into the underground. There are already copious amounts of gore coating the front of their war machine, and within the first second of diving down the ramps Donnie built years ago, another three mutants go under the wheels. There’s hardly a bump to their thick tires, and April is too overwhelmed by success to even care about the crushed bodies in their wake.

Casey takes the corners at a screaming speed; face freshly painted in his black and white mask in honor of this event. He’s a ghastly skeleton with a smile wide enough to show his gums, and April suspects she’s no less terrifying for her own toothily triumphant snarl, hair whipping in the wind as she leans out the window and pre-emptively takes down enemies in their way. Her gun whines and fires, streaking pink in the darkness and exploding the skulls of each mark.

It feels _amazing_ to finally have something go their way, to finally _make progress,_ to finally get something _done._ Weeks of languishing and frustration, and now it’s like they’re on top of the world- carving a red path through the city and headed straight towards their goal.

The high of victory is short lived.

April stands in the lair, after rushing out of the vehicle, and finds no one there.

She pants, adrenaline still coursing through her, but there’s _no one here._ She checks with her powers once, twice, yells for any of the brothers to answer. By the time Casey is by her side, also yelling for Leo, Raph, Donnie, Mikey- _any of them-_ April feels her hope sinking in her chest.

There’s no one here. Only ruins.

When they’d driven in, guns blazing, all the mutants nesting in the lair had scrambled out through the water pipes to make hasty exit. Evidence of their stay, possibly starting within days of the mutagen bombs, is everywhere. Couches shredded, paper walls torn down, every video and table top game effectively destroyed. Any sign that this was a carefully maintained, truly loved home… is gone.

It’s just like the rest of the city. Everything is in ruins, and they’re alone.

April closes her eyes, fighting a burn behind them, and the heavy laser gun in her hands feels as pointless as struggles have been.

 

\--/--

 

“Well… now what are supposed to do?” Casey asks quietly, much later in the day. He’s got his knees to his chest as they sit; face paint washed away with rough scrubbing and dejection all through his posture. April knows they’re both pretending the redness to them was caused by the cloth.

April stares at the screen of her recently revived t-phone, brought back by charging it in the war truck. She says nothing as she reads at the date telling her when she last sent a text.

It’s been 36 days since the bombs fell. 36 days since they last saw the brothers.

The last text she sent was to her father, telling him to stay safe and to stay inside until this was over. She’d missed his reply message.

 _Be careful,_ he’d texted. Followed by, _I love you. Come home safe._

April curls on herself, and says nothing in response to Casey’s question. Her throat and eyes and heart ache with the misery and grief welling up in her, and it’s as her stifled sobs increase that Casey moves to sit beside her; shoulder to shoulder as they share the loss of their last hope.

The sun sinks low outside their shelter, and neither of them moves until long after.

 

\--/--

 

Day 37 is hard to wake up to. They’d held onto the slim hope that getting back down to the lair would accomplish something, set them on the path to _fixing_ things. Or at least help them find their friends.

They don’t let it break them. Giving up completely just isn’t something any of them have ever done. Instead April and Casey wake up, wash their faces, and sit down to eat together.

“The Shellraiser was gone,” April remarks over their breakfast of canned meats, canned fruits, and bottled water.

Casey grunts. He steals a bite of her canned apricots. “But we got real mutants runnin’ around now, one of them could’ve taken it,” he counters, chewing the fruit and swallowing. “If it were one of the brothers, they would’ve left us a message, or… I don’t know. Found us already.”

They’ve been subtle and quiet in their rooftop runs, but not to the point ninjas would miss their presences. The fact that not a single one of the brothers has shown up still hangs over them with despairing weight.

“We haven’t seen it being driven around the city,” April says.

“City’s a shithole right now; I wouldn’t blame anyone who got out of dodge first chance they could.”

April steals some of his sardines, eating the little fish in short bites.

“Maybe we should do that,” she says, and the suggestion hangs in the air. A choice.

Casey is quiet for a beat, and then says, “Maybe we hit up the farmhouse?”

April picks at the label of her apricot can, indecision squirming in her gut.

“Maybe,” she says finally. Casey mumbles the same, and they again steal from each other’s cans.

 

\--/--

 

They linger for another few weeks. The choice to leave is… weighty. Once they’re gone, who knows what will happen.

And their families are here. However twisted and mindless they’ve become, that’s still their family. Being in the city is a constant danger, filled with creatures that any day might find their way into April and Casey’s hideout, but it’s their home.

They fought so hard to protect New York, to protect their families. Leaving both behind even in theory feels like a betrayal.

But the slightest chance the brothers might be out there somewhere, might be at the farmhouse and waiting for them… it’s hard to resist.

April spends hours during her night watches, staring at the screen of her t-phone. Thumbing through the photos she’s taken of and with her found family.

She pauses on a recent one. A candid moment of Donnie, absolutely focused on a game of chess against Mikey, which he had been losing badly. No one had been willing to tell him Mikey kept slipping their pieces into different spots at random, seeing as Donnie’s climbing frustration had been too funny.

She flicks to the left, and finds one taken a split second before the other. Her best friend shooting her a goofy grin, while his little brother sneakily swaps three pieces off the board.

April’s heart aches and she wipes at her eyes.

She misses them all so much; it’s become a physical pain. She doesn’t know if it will ever ease. Not until she’s got them back at her side, safe and sound, like they always somehow are. The picture of Donnie’s smile looks up from her palms, and she has to wipe her eyes again.

April misses Donnie’s voice, misses his laugh. Misses brushing hands over family dinners and misses locking weapons during training. She misses him.

April misses not constantly hurting like this.

When time comes, she wakes Casey from his restless sleep. She curls up in the warm spot he leaves behind; tucking herself into the blankets they’ve been sharing since the start of their stay. April clutches her phone to herself while she falls asleep, and dreams of things lost.

 

\--/--

 

On day 44, they decide…

It’s time.

It’s not made easily. They’ve talked in circles about it, about what they would do if the farmhouse were empty when they got there, about what they’d do if they _did_ find the brothers, and its only after the latest close call with claws coming down on Casey’s leg that they choose to leave New York.

Casey’s leg will be fine, it wasn’t even actually injured. It’s the scare though, of how close he could have been to being crippled. That’s what makes them sit up the following night, pressed together at the shoulder on their bed and letting the near tragedy shudder through them.

They can’t stay here forever. Not without the eventuality that someday their skills will fail them. They’re good, even _great_ , but they’re not invincible.

Especially when they’re two severed limbs of a full team. Without the brothers, how long will they really last in such a hostile territory?

It hurts. It hurts just as much as everything else to choose to leave, to abandon their mutated families, but they have no choice.

Survival is priority. No matter what, they survive, they overcome. They keep moving forwards.

They still end up in a tangle of miserable limbs on their bed, for a few hours giving into the childish need to just be held by someone else. Someone who they can trust to not just watch their back in a fight, but to handle the tears and snot of having to say goodbye to everything they’ve ever known.

April hands Casey a box of tissues when they’ve finally gotten it all out. After he makes a series of disgusting noises into the tissues, he passes the box right back to her.

They begin preparation to leave within the next hour, too restless to even consider sleeping.

 

\--/--

 

They’ve been hoarding food and water since the beginning, and it only takes a short while to arrange all their supplies in the large enclose back of the war truck, affectionately if unimaginatively nicknamed War Machine.

They’re not terribly good with names, in all honesty. That’s always been Mikey’s forte in their group dynamic.

“We’ll let him rename it later,” April says, even if that promise is laid on a sliver of hope. Casey shrugs noncommittedly and finishes shoving the boxes of water into place to be strapped down.

 They’ve got enough supplies to last them a few weeks if they ration, maybe a month and some days if they really stretch it. There are enough weapons crammed into the War Machine that they could potentially fight off another invasion all on their own, and they’ve still managed to find a bit of room for a single size mattress to the side of the truck, along with the few personal items and bundles of clothing they’re taking with them. Top that off with all the medical equipment they know how to use packaged efficiently as possible and they’re ready to go.

They still spend all of the night 45’s evening in their hideout apartment, unwilling to set out in the darkness, and still struggling with the final goodbye. Once they leave, it’s very unlikely they’ll return. Not if they can’t find the brothers.

They debate going to their old apartments, to see their families one last time. In the end, the prospect of facing their failures like that is too painful to bear. They pass on the idea, and instead spend the night looking at photos of them and their friends and their families. Of times that were so much happier.

Another tissue box is needed, and is used up in short order.

When dawn breaks, they stand on the roof of their hideout and watch the sunrise. Warmth sinks into the world bit by bit, and if April doesn’t listen to the now ambient sounds of mutant humans going about their lives, she can pretend it’s just another normal day.

Casey’s fingers lace with hers for a moment, his eyes set on the horizon. They stay only until the sun is creeping its way towards true morning, and then they’re off.

 

\--/--

 

The roads leading out of New York are crowded with abandoned vehicles, sometimes occupied by mutants that scramble to get out of their path. The War Machine bulldozes through the blockades easy as breathing, shoving metal frames aside without any effort at all. It’s powerful engine relentless.

April slowly relaxes in the passenger seat, watching their city grow smaller and smaller in the side mirror. For the first time in weeks, they’re not in a position where a mutant could attack at any time. They’re the best armed they’ve been since their team split up, and the multiple guns April possesses is as great a comfort as anything can be for the moment.

Casey is relaxing, too; leaning back in his seat as the road gets sparser with obstacles. When they hit the freeway, which is simple to navigate with most of its dead traffic spread out, they’ve both unwound enough it’s almost calm.

April remains vigilant enough that she’ll see potential attackers coming, but for the most part rests her senses as they drive. The road blends together as they make their way to Northampton, and April and Casey trade easy small talk. Thoughts about a book April read recently, which of the Power Rangers they’d prefer to be, what kind of little dashboard bobbles Casey is allowed to get for their truck, etc.

About forty-five minutes out of the city, it starts raining.

Casey turns on the wipers as the intensity of the fall picks up, and April is tempted to stick out her hand and feel its cool touch. It hasn’t rained since the first weeks after the bombs; raindrops heavy with silt and residue as the earth tried to cleanse itself of the smoke and toxic waste dumped into its air.

She rolls down the window just enough to stick out her fingers into the downpour, and brings them back in to sniff at the rainfall.

It smells… wrong. The scent of wet earth coming from the open window doesn’t smell right either; just off-key enough it makes its way into the back of April’s throat. It itches.

Casey coughs into his fist, clearing his throat. April closes the window and wipes away the wrong smelling water on her pant leg. As buildings become scarcer, she notes how trees are missing most of their leaves, that grass in great swathes is browning despite this being a fertile season.

April isn’t well versed in environmental science, but she knows what something looks like when it’s dying.

The downpour becomes a pounding onslaught of water, and April tries to focus on keeping watch, rather than on the grim fact that the world is further deteriorating right before her eyes.

Time ticks on, and the drive continues. Around an hour out, they lapse into uneasy silence. They’re safe from most threats now, armed to the teeth and enclosed in the strudy War Machine, but the likelihood of this being a fruitless venture hangs over them like the thick clouds in the sky do.

The dirt road up to the farmhouse is slick mud, the rain having beaten down and washed away any loose soil. Their tires leave deep imprints in it as they go, though how long they’ll last in the storm’s tirade is anyone’s guess.

They pull up in front of the dark farmhouse, which is unchanged in every way since they last visited. If April were to forget what vehicle they sit in and the exhausted ache in her bones, she could pretend for a moment this is just her and Casey, returning from the store with tonight’s dinner like they did so many times all those years ago.

It’s been ages since those three and some months, and April can only hang onto that wistful dream for a moment. Reality is too cruel to ignore.

“Don’t see any cars, or lights,” Casey says, eyes scanning the area.

“They could have walked out here, or put their vehicle in the garage,” April counters. “And they could be conserving batteries and candles.”

Casey grunts, but doesn’t deny the slim hope they’re both holding onto. They sit in the War Machine for another few moments, letting the rain outside pound the exterior and delaying the inevitable.

The waiting gets to be too much for Casey, and he shrugs on the thick jacket he’d scavenged last week. April pulls on her own jacket, flipping up the hood and bringing her laser rifle to life as she steps out into the rainstorm.

They march up the front steps together, respective weapons hanging loosely in their hands. Once out of the heavy rain, April has a better look at the front door.

The lock is broken.

April trades a look with Casey, who nods once. They both raise their weapons.

Casey turns the handle of the door, nudging it open with his hockey stick while April trains her barrel on the inside. Nothing jumps out, no hidden trap is triggered. They cautiously make their way inside.

April sweeps the area with her senses, and comes up empty. She mutters to Casey that she can’t _feel_ anyone there, but doesn’t give him the all clear yet. They remain tense, slowly making their way into the house. It remains silent except for the soft steps of their boots.

They stay back to back for another dozen seconds, and then nervously relax their stances. April lets out a sigh the same time as Casey.

“Whoever broke in probably moved on already,” April ventures, though the farmhouse doesn’t seem to have suffered scavenging.

“Yeah, but who the hell else would come here?” Casey asks, lowering his weapon and stalking deeper into the house. He’s headed for the kitchen, while April’s eyes are glancing between the stairs or the living room.

“I’m going up,” April informs him, and ascends to the second level.

The bathroom is untouched, same as the bedrooms closest to it. A fine layer of dust is disturbed by April opening and closing the doors to all of them. In the master bedroom though, she finds her eyes going wide.

The bed is unmade, unlike in the other bedrooms. There’s paper crumpled up and tossed everywhere, pencils and graphite thrown with them, and in the wastebasket, sits a damaged sketchbook.

April’s fingers tremble as she reaches for it, dropping her gun on the wood floor and grasping the wrecked thing. Most of its pages are missing, torn out and left scattered in the room, but unmistakably is Raph’s name on the inside of the cover.

April snags a crumpled paper, smoothing its edges hastily. Her heart clenches in confused grief and hope, finding scribbled out, half done shapes that resemble almost nothing of the art her friend had been so secretive about, but still so proud of his skill for.

And yet…

Her fingers shake as she traces the smudged graphite. There’s so much obvious frustration to the piece, and just the barest hint of the style she’s familiar with.

It doesn’t make any sense. It _feels_ like Raph, resonating with the sixth sense April has, but it also doesn’t. Like a stranger has been granted the skills her friend possesses, and can only use in fits and bursts.

 _“APRIL!”_ Casey suddenly shouts from downstairs, and she ripped out of her reverie of confusion. April snatches her gun up and abandons the sketchbook; responding to the urgency in Casey’s voice and streaking down the stairs.

She enters the living room at a sprint, feet skidding on the floor as she raises her weapon to whatever threat is making Casey panic.

He turns to her with an expression of wild disbelief.

“April,” he rasps, pointing at the wall. “Look.”

April’s eyes find the bold shapes there, and she stumbles as they form into words in her mind.

 _WE LIVED,_ proclaims the largest of the words, painted in thick strokes at the top of the paragraph. There are other words following, information about when they’d been here, how many of them are left, but April is stuck on the first few.

_WE LIVED. D & R, INJURED BUT SURVIVING._

April’s hand numbly finds Casey’s sleeve, his hands coming to clutch at April’s arms as they lean on each other without strength.

“They’re alive,” April breathes in a whisper. Then louder, “Casey, they’re _alive.”_

“Oh my god,” Casey is saying, “They made it out here like, three days ahead of us, they- they _made it,_ oh my god, they’re _alive,_ those assholes made it out _alive-_ ”

 _Injured but surviving,_ the words echo through April and bring a furious swell of hot emotion. Relief is crushing her, crumbling the walls of numb resignation she’s built up and leaving her open to the flood.

The short paragraph in boxy letters is clipped and to the point: listing that Raph is suffering amnesia, that Mikey and Leo are still missing, that they’ve got the Shellraiser, and that if any of them ever find this message, to know they’re headed further inland without destination. It’s all unmistakably Donnie’s work, detailing everything like that in so few words, and April’s legs try to buckle under the knowledge that he’s _alive._

April pulls Casey face down to hers, putting their foreheads together as they smile through deliriously happy tears. Hysterical laughter bubbles out of April, and for a brief second she presses her lips to Casey’s cheek.

“They’re _alive,”_ she repeats, joy ringing all through her body.

“I know, I _know,”_ Casey repeats back, a real and genuine smile on his face that isn’t for blood or violence, but sheer overwhelming happiness that they’re _not alone._

They’re not alone. Two of the brothers lived. Donnie and Raph are out there somewhere, still alive, still fighting on, and April and Casey _aren’t alone._

The future ahead suddenly looks so much more hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd like to take this moment in time to remind everyone that in the previous fic, casey and april never did find raph and donnie. :)
> 
> this isn't even half the angst i have in store. the next part will be my favorite part. :) :) :)


	3. D&R: a side story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raph licks his lips nervously, feeling their dry cracks. “He’s… he’s just a bit unusual, is all. We don’t mean any harm by that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @ slipstream: you mentioned to me on tumblr that there isn't nearly enough robo donnie angst fic out there, and you know what? totally agree with that statement.
> 
> so here we are again, a side story from MA raph's perspective. featuring introspection, bugs, bickering, light existential angst, and the patented gruff comfort of our favorite amnesiac.
> 
> (fyi i want to finish the april & casey fic sooner than later, but man oh man, does my attention and time ever get eaten up by a billion other things.)

The only world he’s ever known is this one. Dangerous, deadly, and full of the dying. The only people able to survive in it are the ones built for it, who can claw out an existence in the heat and sand. It’s the only life he’s ever lived, and he clings to it as stubbornly as anyone.

The metal being that walks beside him, everywhere he goes, tells him about how it used to be different. How someone like him would have had to live in sewers, in shadows, and never risk being caught by the flat-foot creatures who formerly ruled the world.

The metal being tells him often, all the time, how they used to do that. Together, with their brothers and father.

Raph doesn’t remember that.

Far as he’s concerned, he’s got Donnie as a brother, even if that’s complicated as all hell, and no one else in the world even close to related to him. It’s been just them right from the start of his memories, when he opened his eyes for the first time and met the only thing in the world that gave half a damn about him.

And really, that’s all that Raph needs. Food, water, rest, and some company. Donnie says things used to be different, that they had so much more than just those things, but Raph isn’t all that interested in hearing those stories.

Maybe it’s a meagre collection, but Raph has no reference for anything else. For him, it’s normal. It’s just his life.

Kind of like how Donnie is a cold, metalloid creature, and still calls himself Raph’s brother, despite Raph being flesh and blood. That’s just normal for them, normal for Donnie. Raph barely remembers anything else- barely remembers someone taller than him, a strip of purple across his eyes, a gap toothed smile or smirk belonging to someone who just didn’t know when to give up on anyone…

Not much else, besides impressions of care and affection. Just those things, and everything else Raph knows of Donnie is circuitry and wires. Cold on the outside, burning hot at the center of his crystal life source. A sentient machine with a body he built himself, and no one else in existence like him.

But for Raph, he considers it normal, and no one else’s opinion has ever mattered.

It’s a shame Donnie doesn’t seem hold that same mentality, even after years of things being this way.

 

\--/--

 

With just Raph needing water and food, it makes supplies last longer. And he’s sparing about how much he consumes, forcing their stock to stretch as far as possible. Avoiding the inevitable point when they’ll have to return to somewhere with civilization.

For whatever reason, large crowds make Raph flinch back. He feels claustrophobic in the ramshackle markets and villages mutants have set up, exposed in a way that makes him instinctively want to be somewhere hidden and dark.

The impulse to turn tail every time they go near these places is bizarre. From what Donnie’s told them of their isolation growing up, it would make more sense for Raph to _enjoy_ being around people like himself, right?

…ignoring the fact that all of those mutants are _also_ hiding weapons on their person at all times, and are undoubtedly just as ready to kill for resources as Raph is.

Regardless, Raph still feels stupid for the tightness in his chest whenever they find need to go into settlements. Donnie never seems at all uncomfortable; not on the surface, at least. It can be hard to gauge how the robot is feeling, what with no facial features and all.

Raph’s gotten to be okay at reading the blank metal of Donnie’s face, anyway. Enough that he can pick up some of the more subtle shifts in mood his brother has. Usually.

He doesn’t notice it, though, this time around. Doesn’t notice that as they move through the throngs of mutants large and small, that Raph isn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable with the crowds. He’s more distracted by the smells of what’s for sale and trade, by the press of unfamiliar bodies invading his space, by the prospect what they’ve come with to barter might not be enough to get what he needs.

“You get food, I got water,” Raph informs his brother absently, breaking off from him so they can get this done faster. Being around so many people puts an itch to his scales he can’t stand for very long, and the quicker they leave the better.

“ _Wait, Raph- ugh, fine,”_ he hears Donnie mutter as they split, and doesn’t pay the irritated words much mind. Donnie is either freakishly chipper, grumpy as hell, or having his rare moments of existential crisis. Grumpy is good enough for today’s job, as long as Donnie gets a good trade.

One of the more useful things about having a know-it-all old-worlder following him around stubbornly, is that Raph can get good trade materials from Donnie. Electronics are rare these days, and even rarer are people who can make heads or literal tails of how to fix broken machines, besides cars. Cars and guns are common enough, and if you don’t have one or both out in the wastes… well, you’re good as carrion within the first mile.

But Donnie knows cars, guns, _and_ electronics, and fixes them with an ease Raph has yet to see in anyone else. The little machines, or mechanical parts, that Donnie picks up and repairs with next to no tools make for good trading. There’s always someone out there who has enough food and water to spare they’re willing to give it in return for something shiny.

Raph gets enough water supply to last himself for three weeks- three and a half, if he really tries. And he only has to do a few threat displays at any potential muggers circling him and his trade. Flash his laser guns in their holsters under his ragged daytime coat, sneer toothily at the largely canine population living here, and heft the large water containers back across his shell without even breaking a sweat.

Wisely, the eyes following him turn elsewhere. Raph goes back into the worst of the crowd, leaving behind the heavily guarded water trade post and what’s probably an important chunk of an engine block that Donnie restored.

Raph pushes through the milling mutants, wary of pickpockets and those desperate enough to try fighting him for his water. None present themselves today, thankfully, and he starts following the scent of food towards where Donnie should be. Things are going well. Maybe today they’ll get luckier than usual, and nothing will go remotely wrong.

The murmur of the crowd, as he gets closer to the food stalls, changes tone. It becomes less like casual chatter, more like hushed tones with hints of wary growls.

“ _-never seen somethin’ like_ that-”

“ _-talking, but that’s not possible, right-?”_

_“-not animal, not one of those flat foots, what could it-”_

_“-should we call someone? Get one of the packs to chase it out-”_

No way, they’re not- but who else could they be talking about-?

Cracking gunshots rings out in the heat of the day, and everyone with any sense in their skull rushes to get clear of the fight. Howls of warning go up, and the entire market crowd goes into a frenzy.

“Fuck’s sake,” Raph says to himself, and starts running.

He’s shoved around by fleeing mutants, nearly getting trampled by some of the larger ones. He still manages to fight his way through, pushing through the circling mutants looking to get _in_ on the disturbance, rather than run from it like everyone else.

Fuckers all have wasteland sickness, Raph can smell it on them and see it in their eyes. The madness that creeps into the mutants who spend too much time under the sun without water, and start to see everyone as a target. As prey.

Raph hasn’t hit that point yet, but sometimes… he does wonder.

Especially since instead of keeping his distance, he heads straight for the source of everyone’s panic: his stupid robotic brother, who is loosely holding his arms in front of himself and has his antenna flat against the back of his head.

“ _…you’ll need bigger shells than that,”_ Donnie says calmly, to the shopkeep that’s pointing an old-world rifle at him. There’s barely scuffs to the dark paint of his metal body, and the look on the coyote’s face is stark fear.

“What the _hell_ are you?” demands the canine, flashing yellow teeth and her tail tucked between her legs.

“ _That’s… complicated.”_

“Kill it, ma! A’fore it gets one of us,” hisses another coyote behind her. Young, barely older than a pup. The juvenile and her five siblings have all clustered behind their mother, raising guns and knives of their own. None of them enough to actually pierced the reinforced metal of Donnie’s body, but still-

“Hey! Wait, no, no killing him!” Raph gets between the coyotes and his brother, raising his hands defensively and hoping _he_ doesn’t get shot at. He’s significantly less bullet proof. “He’s with me, we just- we just wanted to trade for produce, like everyone else. What’s wrong with that?”

“You two ain’t _like_ everyone else,” spits the mother, wary curl of her muzzle still in place. But she hasn’t shot them again yet, so. Progress.

Raph licks his lips nervously, feeling their dry cracks. “He’s… he’s just a bit unusual, is all. We don’t mean any harm by that.”

“…how’s a metal thing s’pposed to talk, ma? It’s not right,” whispers one of the pups, wary and frightened.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” replies the mother grimly. Raph feels Donnie shift, a soft whine of static coming from him for a moment.

“ _I’m sorry I scared you all,”_ Donnie says, and Raph is fairly certain his brother is taking steps away from the fortified store. “ _My brother just… needs food. Real food. I have things to trade-”_

“How can a thing like you be his _brother?”_ questions the mother, and though the words are more so confused than angry anymore, Raph winces internally on behalf of Donnie. “You’re not a turtle, no matter which way I look at you. Not even a _reptile._ I ought to shoot you both just for insultin’ my intelligence with a lie like that.”

“No insults meant, ma’am,” Raph says quickly. He doesn’t want to fight their way out of this situation. Worst case scenario, all his water ends up on the dirt ground and he’s shot dead and Donnie ends up all alone. Raph opts to keep peacemaking, rather than he and Donnie having to put down a whole family. “I’m sure you’re- uh. Plenty smart. And we’re going to be smart too and leave now. Have a nice day.”

Donnie starts to protest as Raph shoves him away from the shop. “ _Wh- Raph, no, you need-”_

“I can live on bugs a couple more days,” Raph hisses at him, and keeps shoving. “I however _can’t_ live with bullet holes in my shell. _Move.”_

Donnie does, after that. Raph herds him quickly as possible from the coyotes, and from the interested onlookers. The amount of hands resting on gun holsters and knife sheaths makes him nervous.

“ _That’s what was causin’ the ruckus-?”_

_“It didn’t hurt none the Wailers, now did it-?”_

_“-never seen a machine do something like that…”_

_“Where could it have come from…?”_

_“-flat-foot curse, or something worse, I’ll bet. Maybe it used ta be a normal machine, or turtle thing, and then-”_

_“-somehow got turned into that metal monstrosity…”_

Raph ignores the gossiping whispers that follow their way out of town, and just keeps his brother close as he can. Raph loses track of the amount of times he has to turn a brief threat display on mutants getting too close, their eyes too interested in Donnie, in his abnormality, in his strangeness…

Donnie remains quiet through the whole thing. Which, in all honesty, probably helps. He’s attracting enough stares as it is; if he started actually _talking_ again it’d be even worse.

They get out of the settlement without anyone else shooting at them, but it feels like a near thing.

 

\--/--

 

There used to be living things, out here in the middle of nowhere. There used to be grass, and trees, and scattered small towns filled with what remained of humanity…

And now there’s just a lot of sand, hollowed out houses, and the occasional collection of bones. A really cheery scene to wake up to every morning.

Raph’s used to it, like he’s used to Donnie, and used to making do with small meals. The large bugs that infest the wastes make good protein, at least. Now and again Donnie has made remarks about a cockroach being able to survive anything _except_ Raph’s appetite, but Raph’s always missed the inside joke Donnie is making with those statements. He doesn’t get it, he doesn’t care, and he usually just puts another crunchy bite of his meal between his teeth.

Tonight, Donnie doesn’t make any wisecracks about Raph’s dinner. He just helps collect enough bugs for a sizable meal, and then sits to the side of their campsite while Raph cooks them.

They sometimes have evenings like this, where they don’t talk and don’t ask the other to, either. Mulling over whatever thoughts they’ve got in their heads, letting the crackle of fire fill the silence instead. But it’s not quite the same tonight, and it’s chafing Raph like sand in his joints.

He doesn’t understand the deep thought thing Donnie does, sometimes. Doesn’t understand the way the robot he calls brother feels the need to linger and think on things that happened ages ago. Raph thinks about the future, usually. About how he’ll stretch his supplies a little longer this time, about where they can next scavenge for bartering tools… but Donnie thinks about the past. A past that goes back well beyond Raph own memories, to a place and time that only Donnie knows of anymore.

Raph has had hints, scatters of scenes- faint memories of touches and voices that he doesn’t have context for. But nothing else, really. There’s him, there’s the present, and there’s Donnie. And that’s what he knows best. What he knows, period.

But Donnie knows otherwise, knows of a family he still tells stories about some nights- of people who were loud, and annoying, and yet endearing enough he cares so deeply  for them it seems to kill him in little ways that they’re not here.

Raph doesn’t get that. There’s him, and there’s Donnie, and it’s always been just them. For him, at least. But he does get that those things drive Donnie into contemplative silences, along with the interactions they sometimes have like today.

It’s happening more and more, now. The two of them going into a settlement of mutants and having the inhabitants be organized enough they _notice_ Donnie moving among them. A few years ago, everyone was still too busy trying to scrabble around surviving. Nobody gave a shit that someone in the crowd was metal instead of flesh.

They’re noticing, now. Sooner or later, Donnie might have to start staying back in the Shellraiser in more populated areas and only come out for trips into territories that know them. Raph hasn’t had the mettle to say that to Donnie’s face yet, though, despite knowing that Donnie probably figured that out long before Raph did.

He still doesn’t feel like broaching that topic just yet, not tonight. Not when the wound is probably fresh. Raph opts instead to pick at a subject he’s been wanting to know the answer to.

“Why’d she shoot you?” Raph asks, glancing up from the metal skewer he’s cooking with. “You’re usually the more people-friendly one of us.”

Donnie’s antenna twitch and he turns his face towards Raph in the gloom. In the near darkness, Donnie’s single horizontal purple light makes an eerie glow. Raph is used to it.

“ _…she shot me because they figured out I wasn’t some nutcase wearing full-body armor in the desert,”_ Donnie says, sighing with a crackle from his speakers. Raph snorts a laugh.

“You’d fry if you were,” he says, and Donnie hums in agreement. Raph gives his bugs a few more turns over the flames, and brings the fist-sized morsels close himself to start eating. Not the tastiest meal in the world, but better than starving.

After the warmth of his food has started to hit his stomach, Raph resumes the dropped conversation. Part of him is tired from having to be around other people, but he figures that after how much Donnie looked out for him at the start of his life… he should return the gesture of care, now. Even if he’s not exactly well practiced at it, it’d be decent of him.

“Don’t let what they said get to you, Don,” Raph says, drawing out the rarely used softer emotions in himself. Not much use for them, out in the wastes. “People out here get spooked by their own shadows.”

_“They weren’t completely in the wrong, though. I’m not a turtle, no matter which way you look at me. It’s reasonable for other people to be confused by us calling each other brothers. I don’t blame them for drawing a gun on a sentient machine- I’m more than half of sci-fi’s wet dreams come to life, and I don’t mean that in a good way.”_

Raph groans to himself, because Donnie is clearly hitting another low point that could take up to _days_ to drag him out of again.

“Don’t get depressed over one bitch messing up your paint job, it’s a waste of energy,” Raph scolds.

 _“I have sleep mode to replenish myself,”_ Donnie counters sullenly, “ _and robots can’t be depressed, Raph. I don’t have a brain to produce that kind of chemical imbalance born of repeated trauma.”_

Raph chucks a small rock at Donnie. It bounces off his metal shell with a clang. Donnie twitches all of one antenna at the minor assault.

“Oh my god, at least let me finish my dinner before you have another crisis,” Raph snaps. “I’m already stuck eating bugs until we hit the next village. I don’t wanna deal with you melting down over one person’s shitfit about us.”

 _“Sorry,”_ Donnie apologizes, and that just makes Raph more annoyed. He feels himself puffing up with indignation, frustration... and then lets it all out in a sigh.

Getting mad won’t help this. Anger is easy for Raph to feel, as he’s discovered over the past few years, but it’s not an emotion that does much to pull Donnie out of these swings of melancholy.

Raph puts down his stick of bugs, and gets up from his place by the fire. Ambling over to where Donnie has sat himself down, Raph shivers in the cold of the desert night even with his thick aviator jacket on. His brother doesn’t even have the decency to budge his metal butt over so they can comfortably share the rock he’s on, so Raph shoves him over gently. Donnie lets himself be shoved without a word of protest, and then they sit like that for a moment, with only the crackle of dried wood burning to fill the night air.

“…hey, what was the first thing I told you when you first had a meltdown about this stuff?” Raph coaxes, nudging his brother’s shoulder. “I told you it didn’t matter what anyone thought about us. We got our own thing going, and everyone else can fuck off.”

“ _No, you said, and I quote,”_ Donnie’s voice suddenly changes, switching to a recording, “‘-you’re the stubborn asshole I remember you being and can do what no one else can’, _end quote.”_

“That point still stands, and that also continues to be fucking creepy, thanks,” Raph comments dryly, as he always does whenever Donnie ‘quotes’ one of their old conversations. “I still hate you for figuring out you could do that.”

“ _Your discomfort feeds my copy-pasted soul.”_

Raph elbows Donnie’s side. “Man, fuck you. Let me less of an asshole for once and comfort you.”

 _“I’m fine, Raph, really,”_ Donnie protests. “ _I’m just nearing the end of my battery for today. Plus, as I said, they’re not exactly wrong about me. ‘Metal monstrosity’ is a new one, though-”_

“Donnie,” Raph says, and Donnie cuts off the beginning of his self-deprecation justification. He lets out a frustrated sigh instead, rubbing the back of his metal neck and making a scraping sound.

“ _It’s just ironic, you know? That just when the world becomes mutant friendly… I end up even more of a freak than we all used to be. And I don’t even get to be a freak with a heartbeat anymore. No, I have to be the very last AI on earth and deal with the fact that nothing like me will exist for probably another few hundred years, since we all got launched right back into the dark ages. Oh and watch you age and die slowly, but that’s not the topic tonight.”_

“I’m only twenty-five, Donnie. I’m not dead yet.”

“ _You’re always going to be older than I am, like this, and that’s scary.”_

“Pick one thing to fixate on tonight: not aging, or being ostracized by society.”

“ _Technically, those are the same problem at their source.”_

“One, Donnie. One crisis tonight.”

“ _Multitasking is more fun,”_ Donnie quips flatly, sinking to curl over his knees. Raph pats his cold metal shell, all the heat of the hot day’s sun already seeped out into the night.

“ _…it’s just really sucky, honestly,”_ Donnie says after a pause. “ _That after every part of human society being wiped out… even surrounded by mutants… I still can’t go buy god damn groceries like a normal person.”_

“What’re groceries?” Raph asks, wrinkling his flat nose. Unfamiliar words are common in Donnie’s vocabulary, since he’s the only one nowadays who uses old-world slang.

“ _It’s what people called items bought at produce stores, like the one I attempted to trade at today,”_ Donnie informs his knees. Raph thinks to himself it would be simpler to just say you’re going to go get food supplies, but sure. Make up a whole new word for the action if you want.

Humans must have been weird and annoying. Raph can’t imagine not being able to roam like they do, finding a new horizon to cross each week. The life Donnie describes sounds very… cramped. Dead-end in a sense.

It’s deadly in the wastelands, and it has harsh living conditions to say the least, but out here Raph is free of anyone’s laws. Free to do whatever he wants, including call a sentient machine his family. Eventually, Donnie will probably figure that one out like Raph has. Better to be isolated and free, than anything else.

But, he might not be the best person to give that assessment. It is, after all, the only kind of life he’s ever lived.

“Well… if it would make you feel better,” Raph says, scratching his chin absently, “we could go raid their ‘keep in revenge.”

Donnie lets out a weak laugh, dry as anything. “ _You want to go rob a family of their livelihood over a measly shooting and some insults? Really?”_

“Eh, they pissed me off. And it’s not like we’re gonna be doing anything else any time soon.”

“ _Your lack of morals is unsurprising by this point.”_

“It’s not like I had any role models besides you, and do you know how many times I saw you crack open someone’s skull just so I’d have enough water that week? A lot more times than I got fingers and toes, Donnie. Way more.”

Donnie tsks. “ _You had role models_ besides _me, you just don’t… never mind. I really only have myself to blame for this.”_

Raph pats his brother’s cold shell again, feeling the ridges of the sewer plates it’s made from. The city they come from, _NYC_ in boldly stamped imprints, has long since fallen into the same disrepair as every other city out there. Raph doesn’t remember what it was like, in the old days. All he knows is how it is now, filled with bones of warped humans, and the bloodthirsty turf wars of the mutant gangs in residence.

He sometimes lets himself wonder who he used to be, in those days before, and if his other self was anything like he is now.

Mostly, he wonders if he felt as much dependence and care towards Donnie, or any of the brothers and friends they supposedly had. In the life he’s lived, without Donnie… he probably would have died within the first days of his existence. Torn apart by twisted flat-foot monsters before he even had a chance to learn his own name.

Metal or not, Donnie is his brother. And anyone who thinks otherwise can meet the barrel of his favorite gun if they don’t piss off.

“Cheer up,” Raph says, giving an extra firm pat to Donnie’s shell. “In the end, you’ll outlive every asshole around here, and then you can dance on all our graves.”

Donnie lets out a bark of laughter, his speakers straining around the sudden sound. “ _Is that the crisis I’m allowed to have tonight? Living an indefinite lifetime?”_

“It’s not like you haven’t had it like, seven times already,” Raph shrugs. “I got into practice dealing with them.”

“ _Hm, poor you.”_

“Yup. Poor me.”

The silence that follows is easier than the original. It’s not stiff with grit and pent up emotions, but a comfortable kind of grimness they exist in day to day. It’s just how things are, out here in the wastes. Tough shit to anyone who can’t cope with that.

Well, maybe Raph can let Donnie have his moment of inability to cope, just for a while longer. But only because they’re brothers, and Raph somehow ended up caring a stupid amount for the sentient trashcan.

“Don’t listen to ‘em, Don,” Raph says after a while. He leans forwards on his knees, looking down at Donnie’s still hunched form. “There’re plenty worse monsters out there than a robot turtle. You don’t even eat babies or anything, honestly.”

“ _I’ll put that on my list of impossible to accomplish tasks to rectify,”_ Donnie says. Then he sighs, finally lifting his head enough to put it on his arms and knees. “ _Just… god, I hate living sometimes. Even if I’m not technically alive anymore, this is just… a really shitty world to live in. Makes it really hard, some days.”_

Looking out into the darkness surrounding their campsite, the wide plains filled with nothing but ruins and dangers… Raph nods, shifting his weight so their sides press together.

“Yeah, I know,” Raph says. “But life is just shitty in general. Might as well keep going out of spite, right? Prove everyone else wrong and whatever.”

“ _I suppose,”_ Donnie agrees quietly.

Raph keeps him company a while longer, until the fire dies down to the point it really needs attention and Raph’s toes are too cold to stand. When that time comes, he gets up from the uncomfortable rock and stretches his limbs with satisfying pops. Donnie remains seated, but Raph puts a hand on his brother’s head as he passes, giving him a noogie. “Love you, asshole. Now go get some damn sleep, I got first watch. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”

Donnie swats his hand, and snaps, “ _Bullshit, you’re just going to leave me in sleep mode all night and make me drive the rig all day without company.”_

Raph throws a smirk over his shoulder as he walks away. “You say that like it’s not a great plan. Peace and quiet for me all night, and even more peace and quiet tomorrow.”

 _“Oh, fuck off,”_ Donnie says, and throws a small rock at Raph in belated revenge. But it’s not even aimed anywhere squishy, and the cursing is as fond as Raph’s heckling.

 

\--/--

 

When the dawn starts peaking over the horizon, Raph kicks Donnie’s charging station until he wakes up again. After their usual song and dance of mutual hatred of early mornings, Donnie throws one of the spare coats at Raph’s face to be used as a pillow, and grumpily sits down to take the Shellraiser’s wheel.

Raph cusses his brother out just as much as Donnie did him, but does settle into a passenger seat for a long nap. Sleeping through the day’s heat is preferable than being awake to suffer it, and it’s not like Donnie is bothered by sun anyway. It’s a good set up for them, even if Donnie acts like it’s a big issue to be on his lonesome for a few hours.

They’re always alone, but… while Raph insists he prefers it that way, he still has moments when the space around him feels… a little empty in places. For reasons in the back of his mind he doesn’t want to poke at, and doesn’t think he could handle closely examining anyway. So, as he grudgingly will admit, he gets why Donnie likes it better when they keep their schedules to the same hours.

They’re alone out here in the wastelands, but hey, they’re alone together. It’s not that bad of a gig to have going, especially with the serious horsepower of the Shellraiser at their command.

Half a day’s drive from where they’d been, with Raph dozing on and off in the stiff heat of high noon, he hears Donnie speak up for the first time since morning.

“ _Hey, Raph?”_ Donnie asks from the driver’s seat.

Raph shifts in the passenger seat, listening. “Yeah, Don?”

“ _I don’t think I can do supply runs anymore. Not into the larger villages.”_

Raph opens one eye lazily, casting it towards Donnie at the front of the vehicle. His brother’s form betrays no sign of distress about that fact, or any emotion at all, really.

Raph still knows there’s resignation in Donnie’s words, and a kind of deep run misery only the lonely truly understand.

Raph closes his eye again, sighing.

“I know, Donnie. I know.”

 

\--/--

 

Towards the end of the afternoon, Raph makes an effort to wake up and talk with his brother while he drives. They keep the bantering conversation going long after sunset; right up to the point Donnie needs to go into sleep mode to replenish his battery.

Raph parks himself beside Donnie’s charging station after that, and passes the bulk of the night cleaning their weapons. It’s not nearly as lonely as it could be, with the soft revolving lights coming from Donnie’s charger, and the familiar hum of his crystal battery building power echoing through Raph’s shell.

 

\--/--

 

In the wastelands, there are two kinds of people. The kind that claw their way to the top of the heap to survive, and the kind who let their weakness drag them down. Usually, sentimental attachments have something to do with the latter happening.

You have to care about yourself and _only_ yourself to make it to the next day. Losing sight of the goal to survive _no matter what_ means a swift and brutal death. If you’re lucky.

Those are the rules Raph typically lives by, but Donnie is an exception in a lot of senses.

He’s a turtle, but he’s a machine. He’s a computer, but he’s a person. He’s a complete asshat and a total hassle to deal with when a bad mood hits him, but he’s Raph’s best and only friend.

Raph probably would have caught wasteland sickness a long time ago, if he didn’t have a certain bucket of bolts around to watch his shell every step of the way. Reminding him that even if the world is a bleak and barren place out to get you, it’s not all that bad if you have someone to care for, and be cared for in turn.

Sometimes, Raph thinks his brother’s compassion is a dangerous weakness. Holding onto ideals of a world that’s dead and gone. But then again…

It still rubs off on Raph enough that when a punk ass scavenger electrocutes him, steals the Shellraiser, and leaves him to die of starvation and heat exhaustion on the side of the road- Donnie talks him down from doing the same to the hissing and spitting kid trussed up in the passenger seat.

Mira turns out to be an even worse hassle than Donnie’s bad moods. She bites, kicks, lies over and over until she can get what she wants, and is just about the biggest thorn Raph could imagine having in his side.

By the point, Raph remembers enough fragments of his first self that he can see in her flashes of a pair of kunoichi he used to know, and a little bit of his younger self, too. The kind of stubborn determination to live that he can tolerate, and maybe even admire a little.

It would figure, with their luck, that she’d lead them straight into a deadly adventure that nearly gets _all_ of them killed, and somehow reunites them with the brothers they’d thought were dead decades ago.

Raph doesn’t put much stock into trusting or caring for anyone, besides Donnie, but… he figures he can make an exception for just three more people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you all enjoyed this ficlet, i missed my grumpy desert wasteland bros.
> 
> also!!! the reader's choice awards for the tmnt fandom is coming up, and i've been nominated for a whole bunch of my stories (including this one!!). if you could, [go check out the list of fics i'm up to win awards for](https://onthespectrumwriting.tumblr.com/post/172588347613/onthespectrumwriting-tmntuniversalfanficcomp), and give me a couple votes when the time comes.
> 
> thanks for coming around, wish me luck with the competition. :')

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment below if you would. <3


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